POLARIZATION EXPERIMENTS AND FEW NUCLEON SYSTEMS

Abstract

This chapter discusses polarization experiments and few nucleon systems. There has been a long and intimate connection between polarization experiments and nucleon systems. The two reasons for this are—first, earlier polarization experiments could be done only with poor energy and angular resolution so that the results were of interest only for systems whose energy and angle dependence were slowly varying, that is, in few nucleon systems; second, polarization effects have been found to be large in many cases involving few nucleon systems, and the study of various reactions and scatterings from the point of view of their development as useful polarizers or analyzers has been common. Three trends are discernible in the experimental situation. First, the quantity of available data of the analyzing power type is increasing rapidly. Measurements are being made at closely spaced energies and over wide angular ranges. Second, much higher precision on analyzing powers is being sought. There is great interest in the development of calibration standards for the measurement of beam polarizations. Third, the much more difficult polarization transfer and spin-correlation experiments are beginning to be done.