Dispersion relations and the spin polarizabilities of the nucleon

Abstract A forward dispersion calculation is implemented for the spin polarizabilities γ 1 ,⋯, γ 4 of the proton and the neutron. These polarizabilities are related to the spin structure of the nucleon at low energies and are structure-constants of the Compton scattering amplitude at O (ω 3 ) . In the absence of a direct experimental measurement of these quantities, a dispersion calculation serves the purpose of constraining the model building, and of comparing with recent calculations in heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory.