The first measurement of the three-body photodisintegration of polarized 3He using a circularly polarized photon beam has been performed at incident energies of 12.8 and 14.7 MeV. This measurement was carried out at the high-intensity γ-ray source located at Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory. A high-pressure 3He target, polarized via spin exchange optical pumping with alkali metals, was used in the experiment. The spin-dependent double- and single-differential cross sections from 3He(γ,n)pp for laboratory angles varying from 30° to 165° are presented and compared with state-of-the-art three-body calculations. The data reveal the importance of including the Coulomb interaction between protons in the three-body calculations.
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