Spin - Dependent Parton Distributions of the Longitudinally Polarized Photon Beyond the Leading Order

A next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD analysis of the spin-dependent parton distributions $\Delta f^{\gamma}(x,Q^2)$ of the longitudinally polarized photon and of its structure function $g_1^{\gamma}(x,Q^2)$ is performed within the framework of the radiative parton model. The important issues of a suitably chosen factorization scheme and related boundary conditions are discussed in detail. The typical effects of the NLO corrections are quantitatively studied for two very different conceivable scenarios for the NLO polarized parton distributions $\Delta f^{\gamma}(x,Q^2)$.