Two-body disintegration of the deuteron with 0.8–1.8 GeV photons

The differential cross section for the reaction ${}_{}{}^2{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{H}$(γ,p)n has been measured at several center-of-mass angles ranging from 50° to 143° for photon energies between 0.8 and 1.8 GeV. The experiment was performed at the SLAC-NPAS facility with the use of the 1.6 GeV/c spectrometer to detect the high energy protons produced by a bremsstrahlung beam directed at a liquid deuterium target. Contributions from concurrent disintegration by the residual electron beam were determined by measuring the proton yield without the Cu photon radiator. At angles not very far from 90°, the energy dependence of the cross sections is consistent with predictions of scaling using counting rules for constituent quarks. At least one theoretical calculation based on a meson-baryon picture of the reaction is able to reproduce the magnitude and energy dependence of the 90° cross section. The angular distribution exhibits a large enhancement at backward angles at the higher energies.