Incoherent Pion Photoproduction on the Deuteron: A Review

Incoherent pion photoproduction on the deuteron is investigated with inclusion of all leading ¿NN effects. Formal expressions for polarization observables are derived and described by various beam, target and beam-target asymmetries for polarized photons and/or oriented deuterons. Results are given for unpolarized cross sections and all possible polarization observables with polarized photons and/or oriented deuterons. The contributions to the spin asymmetry and the Gerasimov-Drell-Hearn (GDH) integral from separate channels are evaluated by explicit integration up to a photon lab-energy of 350 MeV. Effects of final-state interaction are investigated and their role in these observables are found to be significant, specially for neutral-pion production. The extracted results are compared with available experimental data and predictions of other works, and a satisfactory agreement is obtained. We expect that the results presented in this book may be useful to interpret the recent measurements from the high-intensity and high duty-factor electron accelerators MAMI, ELSA, Jefferson Lab, LEGS, MAX-Lab, SPring-8, LNS, and GRAAL.