Hard bremsstrahlung production in proton-proton collisions has been studied with the ANKE spectrometer at COSY-Juelich in the energy range of 353-800 MeV by detecting the final proton pair {pp}_s from the pp -> {pp}_s reaction with very low excitatio
n energy. Differential cross sections were measured at small diproton c.m. angles from 0 to 20 degrees and the average over this angular interval reveals a broad peak at a beam energy around 650 MeV with a FWHM of about 220 MeV, suggesting the influence of Delta(1232)N intermediate states. Comparison with deuteron photodisintegration shows that the cross section for diproton production is up to two orders of magnitude smaller, due largely to differences in the selection rules.
