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 .

Results are presented on the elastic scattering of photons by protons. The incident photon energy ranged from 0.55 GeV to 4.5 GeV, and the four-momentum transfer t ranged from 0.12 to 1.0 (GeV/c)2. The data at large angles, 60°<θ*<115°, are characterized by a pronounced excitation of the D13(1518) resonance, a shoulder in the 1688-MeV mass region, and a precipitous drop thereafter in the cross section as a function of incident energy. The low-t data are characterized by a diffraction slope of 5 (GeV/c)−2. The data are inconsistent with the predictions of the vector-dominance model if the latter is restricted to ρ0, ω, and φ vector mesons.

Proton Compton scattering has been measured in a coincidence experiment at photon energies between 2.2 and 7 GeV and four-momentum transfers t between −0.06 and −0.85(GeV/ c ) 2 . For ∣ t ∣ ⩽ 0.4 (GeV/ c ) 2 fits of the form d σ /d t = ( A · exp( Bt )) yield forward cross sections A in good agreement with the values calculated from the total hadronic γ p cross section via the optical theorem and the forward dispersion relation. The slopes B do not show a significant energy dependence, the mean value being 5.7 ± 0.4 (GeV/ c ) −2 . The cross section is substantially larger than predicted by the vector-meson dominance model.

Compton scattering on protons has been measured at a mean photon energy of 6 GeV and four-momentum transfers − t between 0.06 and 0.60 (GeV/ c ) 2 . The differential cross section shows a diffraction-like behaviour. The cross section extrapolated to t =0 is in fair agreement with the optical point. Discrepancies with the vector meson dominance model are pointed out.

Measurements have been made on Compton scattering for photon energies between 5 and 17 GeV and t values from -0.06 to -1.1 (GeVc)2. The data were obtained by performing a coincidence between the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center 1.6-GeVc spectrometer and a Lucite shower counter. The scattering appears diffractive out to high t values, but the cross sections seem not to be in good agreement with the prediction of a strict vector-meson-dominance model.

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.

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 of proton Compton scattering have been measured at the Bonn 2.5 GeV synchrotron. The experiment covers photon laboratory energies between 1.2 GeV and 1.7 GeV and the square of the four-momentum transfer ranges fromt=−0.17 GeV2 to −0.98GeV2 corresponding to c.m. scattering angles between 35° and 80°. The cross sections exhibit a forward peak followed by a monotone fall-off up to the largest measured |t|-values. Fits of the formdσ/dt=A·exp(Bt) to the data points with |t|≦0.5 GeV2 yield forward cross sectionsA, which are consistent with the 0° cross sections calculated from the measured total photon-proton cross section. The average slope isB=5.6±0.14 GeV2.

The differential cross sections for γp→γp and γp→π0p have been measured for incident photon energies in the range of 2 to 6 GeV and for |t| ranging from 0.7 to 4.3 GeV2. This corresponds to a center-of-mass angle range of 45° to 128°. The energy dependence of the data is compared to that predicted by several parton models.