Observation of inverse diproton photodisintegration at intermediate energies

Phys Rev Lett. 2008 Sep 5;101(10):102501. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.102501. Epub 2008 Sep 3.

Abstract

The fundamental reaction pp-->{pp}_{s}gamma, where {pp}_{s} is a proton pair with low excitation energy, has been observed with the ANKE spectrometer at COSY-Jülich for proton beam energies of T_{p}=0.353, 0.500, and 0.550 GeV. This is equivalent to photodisintegration of a free 1S0 diproton for photon energies E_{gamma} approximately T_{p}/2. The differential cross sections measured for c.m. angles 0 degrees <theta_{pp}<20 degrees exhibit a steep increase with angle that is compatible with E1 and E2 multipole contributions. The ratio of the measured cross sections to those of np-->gammad is on the 10;{-3}-10;{-2} level. The increase of the pp-->{pp}_{s}gamma cross section with T_{p} might reflect the influence of the Delta(1232) excitation.