We study, within the framework of impulse approximation, photoproduction of pions by deuterons leading to two final protons at incident photon energy varying from 210 to about 700 MeV. Employing for the two-body processes $\gamma N\to \pi N$ a dispersion theoretic model by Chew et al. and taking spin, isospin, and the identity of the two outgoing particles explicitly into account, the present investigation is primarily directed towards studying (i) the effect of the deuteron wave functions used (including the tensor force and hard core), and (ii) the effect of inserting the $\gamma N\to \pi N$ amplitude in different reference frames thereby introducing off-shell corrections to the physical amplitude. We find that the tensor force and hard core terms play only a marginal role in improving the agreement with experimental data. On the other hand, different forms of the wave function, e.g., Yamaguchi versus Gaussian, involving relatively small momentum components do affect the results considerably. The effect of off-shell corrections to the two-body amplitude is found to be significant at medium energies and large angles. The results obtained for the total cross section as well as the differential cross section for the produced pions in the entire angular region are compared with the experimental data.

NUCLEAR REACTIONS Photopion production, total and differential cross sections, impulse approximation, effect of reference frames, deuteron wave functions.

• Received 29 May 1979

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.21.2010