Polarization of the Recoil Proton fromπ0Photoproduction in Hydrogen

The polarization of the recoil proton in neutral single-pion photoproduction from hydrogen, $\gamma +p\to p+{\pi }^0$, has been measured for pion center-of-mass angles near 90° at 7 photon energies from 450 to 900 MeV. The polarization rises to a maximum of 0.58 near 600 MeV and is still 0.42 at 900 MeV. The sign of the polarization is negative in the sense of k×q, where k is the photon momentum and q is the pion momentum. The measured values are given as functions of laboratory photon energy and c.m. pion angle as follows: 450 MeV, 109°, -0.16±0.14; 525 MeV, 84°, -0.36±0.19; 585 MeV, 86°, -0.58±0.15; 660 MeV, 77°, -0.51±0.17; 755 MeV, 76°, -0.55±0.15; 810 MeV, 89°, -0.45±0.17; 895 MeV, 90°, -0.42±0.16. The recoil protons were momentum-analyzed with a magnetic spectrometer. Nuclear emulsion was used as scatterer and detector. The emulsion technique is discussed in detail. The number of individual scatterings in emulsion used for each measurement varied between 750 and 1000.