Abstract
Incoherent pion photoproduction on the deuteron including polarization effects is studied in the energy region from pi-threshold up to the Delta(1232)-resonance with inclusion of all leading pi NN effects. For the elementary pion photoproduction operator, a realistic effective Lagrangian approach is used which displays chiral symmetry, gauge invariance, and crossing symmetry, as well as a consistent treatment of the spin-3/2 interaction. The interactions in the final two-body subsystems are taken in separable form. Effects of final state interaction are investigated and their role in unpolarized and polarization observables are found to be significant. The extracted cross sections and spin asymmetries are compared with available experimental data and predictions of other works, and a satisfactory agreement is obtained. In addition, the sensitivity of results to the elementary N(gamma, pi)N operator is investigated. Considerable dependence of the d(gamma, pi)NN results on the elementary amplitude is found. This indicates that it can serve as a filter for different elementary operators. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.