POLARIZATION PHENOMENA IN PHOTODISINTEGRATION AND ELECTRODISINTEGRATION OF THE LIGHTEST NUCLEI AT MEDIUM ENERGIES

This review discusses the dependence of the target asymmetries and the nucleon polarizations in electrodisintegration of polarized and unpol arized deuterons and the beam asymmetry in disintegration of the He-3 nucleus induced by linearly polarized photons on the choice of model o f the nuclear electromagnetic current (in particular, the meson-exchan ge currents). Special attention is given to the effects of the final-s tate interaction of the np pair in the d(e,e'n)p reaction. The effect of the spin-orbit electromagnetic interaction of the nucleons and of o ther relativistic corrections to the electromagnetic current density o f the nucleus on the formation of the angular and energy dependences o f the polarization observables in these processes is demonstrated. The possibilities of extracting the neutron electric form factor from the inelastic scattering of longitudinally polarized electrons on the deu teron and the He-3 nucleus in inclusive and exclusive reactions are co nsidered. The kinematical regions in which the polarization observable s take values which can be measured at c.w electron accelerators of th e CEBAF type are determined. Various proposals for isolating (in parti cular, in the cumulative region) the structure functions characterizin g the response of the hadronic system to its interaction with electrom agnetic probes are discussed. For this purpose the disintegration of t he lightest nuclei induced by longitudinally polarized electrons under the conditions of the MIT-Bates experiments is analyzed theoretically . The results of the calculations are compared with the data obtained by the Amsterdam, Bonn, MIT-Bates, Novosibirsk, Frascati, Saclay, and Khar'kov groups. In the Conclusion are some ideas which might prove us eful for developing a covariant and gauge-independent description of e lectromagnetic interactions with nuclei. (C) 1995 American Institute o f Physics.