Photoproduction of $\pi^0$-Mesons on the Nucleon and Deuteron

TL;DR

This paper investigates the photoproduction of neutral pions from nucleons and deuterons up to 1.5 GeV, using models to predict cross sections, emphasizing rescattering effects, and evaluates their contribution to the GDH integral with good agreement to experimental data.

Contribution

It applies the MAID-2007 model to deuteron reactions, including rescattering effects, and assesses their impact on the GDH integral, providing new insights into meson photoproduction.

Findings

Rescattering effects significantly influence cross sections.

Predicted results agree well with experimental data.

The GDH integral converges to 256.96 μb up to 1.5 GeV.

Abstract

The photoproduction of $\pi^0$-mesons from the nucleon and deuteron has been studied for incidents of photon energies up to 1.5 GeV. By using the MAID-2007 model for the process on the nucleon, we predict results for the unpolarized and helicity-dependent total cross sections of the semi-exclusive reaction $\gamma d\rightarrow\pi^0X$ ($X=np+d$) with the inclusion of rescattering effects. We find that rescattering effects yield a substantially large contribution. The extracted results are compared with the available experimental data and a satisfactory agreement is obtained. In addition, the contribution of $\gamma d\rightarrow\pi^0X$ ($X=np+d$) to the finite GDH integral has been evaluated by explicit integration up to 1.5 GeV and a total value of 256.96 $\mu$b has been obtained. Convergence of the GDH integral has been reached.