Gauge-covariant canonical formalism revisited with application to the proton spin decomposition

We revisit the gauge-covariant canonical formalism by separating explicitly physical and gauge degrees of freedom. We show in particular that the gauge-invariant linear and angular momentum operators proposed by Chen et al. can consistently be derived from the standard procedure based on Noether’s theorem. Finally, we demonstrate that this approach is essentially equivalent to the gauge-invariant canonical formalism based on the concept of Dirac variables. Because of many similarities with the background field method, the formalism developed here should also be relevant to general relativity and any metric theories.