Polarized Parton Distributions: Theory and Experiments

We have extracted the constituent contributions to the spin of the proton from recent data at CERN, SLAC and DESY. The valence, sea quark and antiquark spin-weighted distributions are determined separately. The data appear to imply a small to moderate polarized gluon distribution, so that the anomaly term is not significant in determining these contributions. We have analyzed the consistency of the results obtained from various sets of data and the Bjorken Sum Rule. All data are consistent with the sum rule, but they differ in the contribution of the strange sea to proton spin. This and the remaining uncertainty in the polarized gluon distribution pose unanswered questions about hadronic spin. Only further experiments which extract information about the polarized gluon and sea will reconcile these differences. We suggest specific experiments which can be performed to determine the size of the polarized sea and gluons.