Difficulties in Spin Treatments in the Quark Model for High-Energy Scattering

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Abstract
The nonrelativistic quark-model treatment of hadron scattering is shown to be inconsistent at relativistic momentum transfers. The validity of predictions is examined. Difficulties arise in the specification of the spin orientations and couplings of spectator quarks whose states are "unchanged" in the scattering process, but which undergo Wigner rotations in the transformation between the rest frames of the initial and final states. The small relativistic "tail" of the mainly nonrelativistic bound-state wave function is also shown to play an important role in relativistic scattering processes. A consistent formulation with spin form factors is developed and applied to determine which of the nonrelativistic predictions are still valid at relativistic velocities, and which break down.