Photodisintegration of polarized deuterons at astrophysical energies

Abstract

A model independent irreducible tensor formalism, developed earlier for np fusion, is extended to discuss photodisintegration of the deuteron at astrophysical energies. It is shown that target analysing powers at θ = π/2 provide a sensitive test to the presence of isoscalar M1 and E2 amplitudes. It is also suggested that a measurement of the coefficient of cos θ in the differential cross section for photodisintegration at photon energies below 2.5 MeV could be very useful to assess the contribution of the isoscalar amplitudes at the astrophysically relevant range of energies to sharpen the predictions of big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN).