Observation of inverse diproton photodisintegration at intermediate energies

The reaction pp->{pp}_sgamma, where {pp}_s is a proton pair with an excitation energy E_{pp}<3 MeV, has been observed with the ANKE spectrometer at COSY-Juelich for proton beam energies of T_p=0.353, 0.500, and 0.550 GeV. This is equivalent to photodisintegration of a free 1S_0 diproton for photon energies Egamma ~ T_p/2. The differential cross sections measured for c.m. angles 0 deg.<theta_{pp}<20 deg. exhibit a steep increase with angle that is compatible with E1 and E2 multipole contributions. The ratio of the measured cross sections to those of np->dgamma is on the 10^{-3}-10^{-2} level. The increase of the pp->{pp}_sgamma cross section with T_p might reflect the influence of the Delta(1232) excitation.