Photoproduction of Mesons in Deuterium

Abstract

The production of positive mesons by photons incident on deuterium is calculated in terms of an effective Hamiltonian containing one term which is independent of and another which depends upon the nucleon spin. The meson spectrum at a given angle to the incident photon beam is evaluated at high photon energies by the closure approximation. At low and intermediate energies the closure approximation is not made, but the neutron-neutron force in the final nucleon state is neglected. These spectra have been integrated over a bremsstrahlung spectrum. The total cross section is found at high photon energies and near the threshold for meson production. It is found that the meson spectrum for small angles is sensitive to the relative size of the spin dependent and spin independent terms.