On the extraction of cross sections for π0 and η photoproduction off neutrons from deuteron data

Abstract

We discuss the procedure of extracting the photoproduction cross section for neutral pseudoscalar mesons off neutrons from deuteron data. The main statement is that the final-state interaction (FSI) corrections for the proton and neutron target are in general not equal, but for pi0 production there are special cases were they have to be identical and there are large regions in the parameter space of incident photon energy and pion polar angle, \theta^*, where they happen to be quite similar. The corrections for both target nucleons are practically identical for $\pi_0$ production in the energy range of the Delta(1232)3/2+ resonance due to the specific isospin structure of this excitation. Also above the $\Delta$-isobar range large differences between proton and neutron correction factors are only predicted for extreme forward angles ($\theta^*$ < 20 deg), but the results are similar for larger angles. Numerical results for the gp-->pi0p and gn-->pi0n correction factors are discussed. Also the model description for the available data on the differential gd-->pi0pn cross sections are given.