Nucleon Spin and the Mixing of Axial Vector Mesons

Abstract

It is shown that the QCD anomaly may lead to an abnormal mixing behavior of the axial vector mesons similar to the pseudoscalar mesons. These mixing effects, involving a gluonic axial vector state, generate a non-vanishing strange quark component in the nucleon. They reduce the matrix element of the singlet axial vector in comparison to the value obtained in a naive quark model. The results are in agreement with the data obtained in the polarized lepton-nucleon scattering experiments.