Photodisintegration of three- and four- nucleon systems

Abstract

Three- and four-nucleon photodisintegration processes are quite efficiently treated by means of effective two-body integral equations in momentum space. We recall some aspects of their derivation, present previous and most recent results obtained within this framework, and discuss general features, trends and effects observed in these investigations: At low energies final-state interaction plays an important role. Even more pronounced is the effect of meson exchange currents. A considerable potential dependence shows up in the low-energy peak region. The different peak heights are found to be closely correlated with the corresponding binding energies. Above the peak region only the difference between potentials with or without p-wave contributions remains relevant. In the differential cross sections the electric quadrupole contributions have to be taken into account. The remarkable agreement between theory and experiment in $p$-$d$ radiative capture is achieved only when incorporating this contribution, together with most of the above-mentioned effects. In the final part of this report we briefly review also methods developed, and results achieved in three- and four- nucleon electrodisintegration. We, in particular, compare them with a recent access to this problem, based on the construction of nucleon-nucleus potentials via Marchenko inversion theory.