Hard photodisintegration of a proton pair in 3He

S. J. Brodsky, L. Frankfurt, R. Gilman, J. R. Hiller, G. A. Miller, E. Piasetzky, M. Sargsian, M. Strikman

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Abstract

Hard photodisintegration of the deuteron has been extensively studied in order to understand the dynamics of the transition from hadronic to quark-gluon descriptions of the strong interaction. In this Letter, we discuss the extension of this program to hard photodisintegration of a pp pair in the 3He nucleus. Experimental confirmation of new features predicted here for the suggested reaction would advance our understanding of hard nuclear reactions. A main prediction, in contrast with low-energy observations, is that the pp breakup cross section is not much smaller than the one for pn break up. In some models, the energy-dependent oscillations observed for pp scattering are predicted to appear in the γ 3He → pp + n reaction. Such an observation would open up a completely new field in studies of color coherence phenomena in hard nuclear reactions. We also demonstrate that, in addition to the energy dependence, the measurement of the light-cone momentum distribution of the recoil neutron provides an independent test of the underlying dynamics of hard disintegration.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)69-77
Number of pages9
JournalPhysics Letters, Section B: Nuclear, Elementary Particle and High-Energy Physics
Volume578
Issue number1-2
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 1 2004

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Nuclear and High Energy Physics

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