General Multipole Expansion of Polarization Observables in Deuteron Electrodisintegration

Abstract

Formal expressions are derived for the multipole expansion of the structure functions of a general polarization observable of exclusive electrodisintegration of the deuteron using a longitudinally polarized beam and/or an oriented target. This allows one to exhibit explicitly the angular dependence of the structure functions by expanding them in terms of the small rotation matrices $d^j_{m'm}(\theta)$, whose coefficients are given in terms of the electromagnetic multipole matrix elements. Furthermore, explicit expressions for the coefficients of the angular distributions of the differential cross section including multipoles up to $L_{max}=3$ are listed in tabular form.Comment: 23 pages revtex including one figure, accepted for Eur.Phys. J.