Deuteron photodisintegration at high energy

The high-energy two-body deuteron break-up is a very well-suited process to identify quark effects in nuclei. In particular, its study in the few GeV region can clarify the transition from the nucleonic to the QCD picture of hadrons. The CEBAF Large Angle Spectrometer (CLAS) at JLab allowed for the first time the complete measurement of the angular distributions of the two-body deuteron photodisintegration differential cross-section at photon energies from 0.5 to 2.95 GeV. First results from the analysis of 30% of the total collected data show persistent forward-backward asymmetry and are well described by a calculation derived in the non-perturbative framework of the Quark Gluon String Model (QGSM).Received: 30 September 2002, Published online: 22 October 2003PACS: 21.45. + v Few-body systems - 25.20.-x Photonuclear reactionsF. Ronchetti: Present address: Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati, CP 13, Via E. Fermi 40, 00044 Frascati, Roma, Italy