High precision measurements of the differential cross sections for π0 photoproduction at forward angles for two nuclei, 12C and 208Pb, have been performed for incident photon energies of 4.9-5.5 GeV to extract the π0→γγ decay width. The experiment was done at Jefferson Lab using the Hall B photon tagger and a high-resolution multichannel calorimeter. The π0→γγ decay width was extracted by fitting the measured cross sections using recently updated theoretical models for the process. The resulting value for the decay width is Γ(π0→γγ)=7.82±0.14(stat)±0.17(syst)  eV. With the 2.8% total uncertainty, this result is a factor of 2.5 more precise than the current Particle Data Group average of this fundamental quantity, and it is consistent with current theoretical predictions.

High energy photon colliders (γγ,γe) are based on e-e-linear colliders where high energy photons are produced using Compton scattering of laser light on high energy electrons just before the interaction point. This paper is a part of the Technical Design Report of the linear collider TESLA.1Physics program, possible parameters and some technical aspects of the photon collider at TESLA are discussed.

Tensor polarization observables (t 20 , t 21 , and t 22 ) have been measured in elastic electron-deuteron scattering for six values of momentum transfer between 0.66 and 1.7 ͑GeV͞c͒ 2 . The experiment was performed at the Jefferson Laboratory in Hall C using the electron High Momentum Spectrometer, a specially designed deuteron magnetic channel and the recoil deuteron polarimeter POLDER. The new data determine to much larger Q 2 the deuteron charge form factors G C and G Q . They are in good agreement with relativistic calculations and disagree with perturbative QCD predictions.

A rigorous extraction of the deuteron charge form factors from tensor polarization data in elastic electron-deuteron scattering, at given values of the 4-momentum transfer, is presented. Then the world data for elastic electron-deuteron scattering is used to parameterize, in three different ways, the three electromagnetic form factors of the deuteron in the 4-momentum transfer range 0-7 fm −1 . This procedure is made possible with the advent of recent polarization measurements. The parameterizations allow a phenomenological characterization of the deuteron electromagnetic structure. They can be used to remove ambiguities in the form factors extraction from future polarization data.

In experimental studies of the Plasma Wake-field Accelerator performed to date at the Argonne Advanced Accelerator Test Facilit,y, significant nonlinearities in both plasma and beam behavior have been observed. The plasma wares driven in the make of the intense driving beam in these experiments exhibit three-dimensional nonlinear behavior which has as yet no quantitative theoretical explanation. This nonlinearity is due in part to the self-pinching of the driving beam in the plasma, as the the denser self-focused beam can excite larger amplitude plasma waves. Th e se lf-pinching is a process with interesting nonlinear aspects: the initial evolution of the beam envelope and the subsequent approach to Bennett equilibrium through phase mixing.