Helicity-dependent photoabsorption cross sections on the nucleon

Abstract

We examine the energy dependence of single-meson photoproduction as it contributes to the Gerasimov-Drell-Hearn (GDH) sum rule. For photon energies above approximately 1 GeV, through the full resonance region, this contribution dominates the proton sum rule integral. Over the same energy region, our single-pion contribution to the neutron sum rule also qualitatively follows a recent set of GDH data. The predicted neutral-pion contribution to the neutron sum rule is nearly zero above 1 GeV in this result. The SAID and Mainz (MAID) results are very different for a number of observables over this energy region.