Two-body photodisintegration of 3He between 7 and 16 MeV

A comprehensive data set is reported for the two-body photodisintegration cross section of 3He using mono-energetic photon beams at eleven energies between 7.0 and 16.0 MeV. A He3+Xe high-pressure gas scintillator served as target and detector. Although our data are in much better agreement with our state-of-the-art theoretical calculations than the majority of the previous data, these calculations underpredict the new data by about 10%. This disagreement suggests an incomplete understanding of the dynamics of the three-nucleon system and its response to electromagnetic probes.