Sensitivity of pp-Bremsstrahlung to Meson-Exchange Currents

Abstract

We present pp-bremsstrahlung cross section calculations at the $\pi$-production threshold to search for kinematics that best differentiate model-dependent descriptions of the NN $t$-matrix and accentuate the contributions of isoscalar meson-exchange currents. Existing optimization procedures are shown to be completely unreliable due to the neglect of meson-exchange currents and phase space variations. We show that phase-space hides the most important differences in model $t$-matrices, but that improved data will be critical to further investigations of exchange currents.