Baryon Spin and Emergent Hadron Mass

This thesis describes the use of Dyson-Schwinger equations (DSEs) to study baryon bound states in QCD. In this work, octet baryon axial form factors are calculated using a symmetry-preserving treatment of a vector $\times$ vector contact interaction (SCI). The baryons are considered as quark-plus-interacting-diquark bound states, whose structure (wave function) is obtained by solving a Poincar\'e-covariant Faddeev equation. Since it preserves symmetries, all consequences of partial conservation of the axial current are manifest. For instance, one finds that octet baryon axial properties are consistent with only minor violations of SU(3)-flavour symmetry, being interpreted as a dynamical consequence of emergent hadron mass (EHM). Considering neutral axial currents, the SCI delivers predictions for the flavour separation of octet baryon axial charges and, consequently, produces values for the associated SU(3) singlet, triplet, and octet axial charges. The results indicate that, at the hadron scale $\zeta_{\mathcal{H}}$, valence degrees of freedom carry approximately $50\%$ of an octet baryon's total spin. Proton structure is one of the principal topics in hadron physics. Its study is expected to reveal key features of both the origin of mass and strong interaction dynamics. This work therefore extended the above analyses to an examination of in-proton parton helicity (spin) distribution functions (DFs). Using Ans\"atze for hadron-scale proton polarised valence quark DFs, predictions are delivered for all proton polarised DFs at the measurement scale $\zeta_{\rm C}^2 = 3\,$GeV$^2$. The pointwise behaviour of the predicted DFs and, consequently, their moments, shows good agreement with results inferred from data. Based on these results, one finds that experimental measurements of the proton flavour-singlet axial charge should return a value $a_0^{\rm E}(\zeta_{\rm C}) = 0.35(2)$.