  We examine the feasibility of gauge invariant descriptions of the gluon
polarization following the proposal that a gauge field can be decomposed into
its physical part and its pure gauge part. We show that gauge invariant angular
momentum currents can be constructed from summations of gauge variant Noether
currents. We present novel expressions of the pure gauge field, which are used
to formulate gauge invariant descriptions of the gluon spin and the photon
spin. We show that the gauge invariant extension of the Chern-Simons current
can describe the spins of the Laguerre-Gauss laser modes. We also discuss the
relation of gauge invariant operators and the parton distributions constructed
from Dirac variables.
