Photodisintegration of the deuteron in the few GeV region using asymptotic amplitudes

Exclusive photodisintegration of the deuteron in the 1-4GeV range is described in terms of a simple covariant and gauge invariant approach using an effective counting rule as the hard part of the d-np vertex. At a scattering angle of theta_cm=90 degrees a prescaling behavior of the differential cross section proportional to 1/s^(n-2) with n ~ 12 is obtained; going away from 90 degrees the value of n decreases slowly, in qualitative agreement with the recent data.