The Chiral Anomaly, Chiral Symmetry breaking and the role of Sphalerons in polarized deeply inelastic scattering

Raju Venugopalan (BNL)


We argue that the physics underlying topological mass generation in QCD (the UA(1) problem) is
also the physics that explains the helicity of the proton. We suggest that measurements of polarized
structure functions at an Electron-Ion Collider can uncover first evidence for topological "Sphaleron-like"
transitions in nature.