The elastic contribution to the Burkhardt -- Cottingham and Generalized Gerasimov--Drell-Hearn Sum Rules

The elastic contribution to the first moment of $g_2(x,Q^2)$ is analysed using a Drell-Yan-West type of relation and is shown to be negative. For a qualitative estimate the one-loop contributions to the polarized DIS sum rules in QED are studied. The behaviour of the generalized Gerasimov-Drell-Hearn sum rule is sensitive to infrared regularization. With a lower threshold for the gluon virtuality the relation of the generalized GDH sum rule to the Burkhardt-Cottingham sum rule is studied. We conclude that the elastic part has to be included for long range interactions but can be consistently discarded for short range interactions.