[en] Hard deuteron photodisintegration has been investigated for 20 years, as its cross section follows the constituent counting rule and it provides insight into the interplay between hadronic and quark-gluon degrees of freedom in high-momentum transfer exclusive reactions. We have now measured for the first time hard pp-pair disintegration in the reaction gamma 3He-->pp+n, using kinematics corresponding to a spectator neutron. Cross sections were measured for 90 deg. c.m. at 8 beam energies, from 0.8 to 4.7 GeV. Preliminary results will be presented and compared to the hard deuteron photodisintegration data.

[en] The protons and neutrons in a nucleus can form strongly correlated nucleon pairs. Scattering experiments, in which a proton is knocked out of the nucleus with high-momentum transfer and high missing momentum, show that in carbon-12 the neutron-proton pairs are nearly 20 times as prevalent as proton-proton pairs and, by inference, neutron-neutron pairs. This difference between the types of pairs is due to the nature of the strong force and has implications for understanding cold dense nuclear systems such as neutron stars.

[en] The charge form factor of ⁴He has been extracted in the range 29 fm^-2 <= Q² <= 77 fm^-2 from elastic electron scattering, detecting ⁴He nuclei and electrons in coincidence with the High Resolution Spectrometers of the Hall A Facility of Jefferson Lab. The results are in qualitative agreement with realistic meson-nucleon theoretical calculations. The data have uncovered a second diffraction minimum, which was predicted in the Q² range of this experiment, and rule out conclusively long-standing predictions of dimensional scaling of high-energy amplitudes using quark counting

[en] We present measurements of the recoil proton polarization for the d(polarized y, polarized p)n reaction at thetac.m. = 90 degrees for photon energies up to 2.4 GeV. These are the first data in this reaction for polarization transfer with circularly polarized photons. The induced polarization py vanishes above 1 GeV, contrary to meson-baryon model expectations, in which resonances lead to large polarizations. However, the polarization transfer Cx does not vanish above 1 GeV, inconsistent with hadron helicity conservation. Thus, we show that the scaling behavior observed in the d(y,p)n cross sections is not a result of perturbative QCD. These data should provide important tests of new nonperturbative calculations in the intermediate energy regime

[en] We present measurements of the ratio of the proton elastic electromagnetic form factors, μpGEp/GMp. The Jefferson Lab Hall A Focal Plane Polarimeter was used to determine the longitudinal and transverse components of the recoil proton polarization in ep elastic scattering; the ratio of these polarization components is proportional to the ratio of the two form factors. These data reproduce the observation of Jones et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 1398 (2000)], that the form factor ratio decreases significantly from unity above Q2 = 1 GeV2