Abstract
The photoproduction of pi(0)-mesons from the nucleon and deuteron has been studied for incidents of photon energies up to 1.5 GeV. By using the MAID-2007 model for the process on the nucleon, we predict results for the unpolarized and helicity-dependent total cross sections of the semi-exclusive reaction gamma d ->pi X-0 (X -> np+d) with the inclusion of rescattering effects. We find that rescattering effects yield a substantially large contribution. The extracted results are compared with the available experimental data and a satisfactory agreement is obtained. In addition, the contribution of gamma p ->pi X-0 (X = np+d) to the finite GDH integral has been evaluated by explicit integration up to 1.5 GeV and a total value of 256.96 mu b has been obtained. Convergence of the GDH integral has been reached.