Compton scattering from the proton was investigated at s=6.9 (GeV/c)**2 and \t=-4.0 (GeV/c)**2 via polarization transfer from circularly polarized incident photons. The longitudinal and transverse components of the recoil proton polarization were measured. The results are in excellent agreement with a prediction based on a reaction mechanism in which the photon interacts with a single quark carrying the spin of the proton and in disagreement with a prediction of pQCD based on a two-gluon exchange mechanism.

Cross-section values for Compton scattering on the proton were measured at 25 kinematic settings over the range s = 5-11 and -t = 2-7 GeV2 with statistical accuracy of a few percent. The scaling power for the s-dependence of the cross section at fixed center of mass angle was found to be 8.0 +/ 0.2, strongly inconsistent with the prediction of perturbative QCD. The observed cross-section values are in fair agreement with the calculations using the handbag mechanism, in which the external photons couple to a single quark.

Differential cross sections for quasi-free Compton scattering from the proton and neutron bound in the deuteron have been measured using the Glasgow/Mainz tagging spectrometer at the Mainz MAMI accelerator together with the Mainz 48 cm $\oslash$ $\times$ 64 cm NaI(Tl) photon detector and the G\"ottingen SENECA recoil detector. The data cover photon energies ranging from 200 MeV to 400 MeV at $\theta^{LAB}_\gamma=136.2^\circ$. Liquid deuterium and hydrogen targets allowed direct comparison of free and quasi-free scattering from the proton. The neutron detection efficiency of the SENECA detector was measured via the reaction $p(\gamma,\pi^+ n)$. The "free" proton Compton scattering cross sections extracted from the bound proton data are in reasonable agreement with those for the free proton which gives confidence in the method to extract the differential cross section for free scattering from quasi-free data. Differential cross sections on the free neutron have been extracted and the difference of the electromagnetic polarizabilities of the neutron have been obtained to be $\alpha-\beta= 9.8\pm 3.6(stat){}^{2.1}_1.1(syst)\pm 2.2(model)$ in units $10^{-4}fm^3$. In combination with the polarizability sum $\alpha +\beta=15.2\pm 0.5$ deduced from photoabsorption data, the neutron electric and magnetic polarizabilities, $\alpha_n=12.5\pm 1.8(stat){}^{+1.1}_{-0.6}\pm 1.1(model)$ and $\beta_n=2.7\mp 1.8(stat){}^{+0.6}_{-1.1}(syst)\mp 1.1(model)$ are obtained. The backward spin polarizability of the neutron was determined to be $\gamma^{(n)}_\pi=(58.6\pm 4.0)\times 10^{-4}fm^4$.

Differential cross sections for Compton scattering by the proton have been measured in the energy interval between 200 and 500 MeV at scattering angles of θ cms = 75° and θ cms = 90° using the CATS, the CATS/TRAJAN, and the COPP setups with the Glasgow Tagger at MAMI (Mainz). The data are compared with predictions from dispersion theory using photo-meson amplitudes from the recent VPI solution SM95. The experiment and the theoretical procedure are described in detail. It is found that the experiment and predictions are in agreement as far as the energy dependence of the differential cross sections in the Δ-range is concerned. However, there is evidence that a scaling down of the resonance part of the M 1+ 3 2 photo-meson amplitude by (2.8 ± 0.9)% is required in comparison with the VPI analysis. The deduced value of the M 1+ 3 2 - photoproduction amplitude at the resonance energy of 320 MeV is: |M 1+ 3 2 | = (39.6 ± 0.4) × 10 −3 m π + −1 .

Differential cross sections of proton Compton scattering have been measured in the angular range between 50° and 130° at incident photon energies from 900 MeV to 1150 MeV. A sharp dip in the angular distribution found by a Bonn group at 110° in the photon energy region around 900 MeV is not observed in the present measurement. A new dip-bump structure is found at photon energies above 1050 MeV, which is similar to that for pion-nucleon scattering.

In the tagged-photon beam at Fermilab, differential cross sections were measured for the elastic scattering of photons on a liquid-hydrogen target. The diffractive forward peak was measured for photon energies between 50 and 130 GeV and |t| values between 0.07 and 1.20 (GeV/c)2. The shape of the diffraction peak is similar to that seen in π−p scattering. The magnitude is that predicted by the optical theorem.

Differential cross sections of proton Compton scattering have been measured in the energy range between 400 MeV and 1050 MeV at C.M.S. angles of 150° and 160°.

The differential cross sections of the proton Compton scattering around the second resonance have been measured at a c.m. angle of 90° for incident photon energies between 450 MeV and 950 MeV in steps of 50 MeV, and at an angle of 60° for energies between 600 MeV and 800 MeV. The results show that the peak of the 2nd resonance agrees with that of the pion photoproduction process. We also calculated the proton Compton scattering based on unitarity and fixed- t dispersion relations. The calculation describes well the data of the cross section and the recoil proton polarization.

Compton-scattering cross sections from hydrogen (γp→γp) and from deuterium have been measured at four-momentum transfer t in the range 0.014<~−t<~0.17 GeV2 and photon energies of 8 and 16 GeV. Fits to our proton data of the form dσdt=AeBt give B≈7.8 GeV−2 and an intercept A which is in agreement with the optical point. Both coherent scattering from deuterons and incoherent scattering from neutrons and protons are seen from deuterium. A small difference between the neutron and proton cross sections is seen, indicating the presence of about a 3% isovector t-channel exchange amplitude in addition to the predominant isoscalar amplitude. The vector-dominance model predicts lower cross sections (by at least 20%) for both the hydrogen and deuterium cases.

We have measured elastic scattering of 5 and 6 GeV photons on hydrogen and deuterium in the angular range 10–50 mrad. On hydrogen we observe a forward diffraction peak with a slope of 8.5 (GeV/ c ) −2 . The extrapolated forward cross sections in units μ b/(GeV/ c ) 2 are 0.82 ± 0.04 at 5 GeV and 0.79 ± 0.04 at 6 GeV. They are consistent with the calculated amplitudes obtained from total cross section measurements via the optical theorem and dispersion relations assuming negligible contributions of spin-dependent amplitudes. Deuterium cross sections show a transition from coherent scattering at low | t | to incoherent scattering at higher | t |. They indicate that the isovector exchange amplitude a 1 is very small compared to the isoscalar a 0 . We obtain |a 1 | 2 /|a 0 +a 1 | 2 =0.13±0.09 , Re (a 0 a ∗ 1 )/|a 0 +a 1 | 2 =0.0±0.03, at 5 GeV , |a 1 | 2 /|a 0 +a 1 | 2 =−0.12±0.15 , Re (a 0 a ∗ 1 )/|a 0 +a 1 | 2 =0.10±0.04, at 6 GeV .