QCD Rescattering and High Energy Two-Body Photodisintegration of the Deuteron

Abstract

Photon absorption by a quark in one nucleon followed by its high momentum transfer interaction with a quark in the other may produce two final-state nucleons with high relative momentum. We sum the relevant quark rescattering diagrams, to show that the scattering amplitude depends on a convolution between the large angle $pn$ scattering amplitude, the hard photon-quark interaction vertex and the low-momentum deuteron wave function. The computed absolute values of the cross section are in reasonable agreement with the data.

4 pages, revised version to be published in Phys. Rev. Lett