Spin Physics at SPring-8 - Recent Results

We have been carrying out hadron photoproduction experiments at SPring-8 since the completion of the LEPS beam-line in 2000. The photoproduction of the φ, K, η and π0 mesons is studied by using linearly polarized photon beams with energies of Eγ = 1.5-2.9 GeV. Introducing a polarized nucleon target is expected to upgrade the LEPS experiments to a new level. The measurement of double spin polarization asymmetries provides important information to investigate the hidden nucleon structure, hadron photoproduction dynamics, and exotic hadron properties. We started developing a polarized HD target in 2005. Five large refrigerators necessary for the polarized target have been already obtained. We plan to carry out an experiment using polarized photon beams and the polarized HD target in 2011-2012. We also started constructing a new beam-line (LEPS2) at SPring-8 in 2010. The large acceptance E949 spectrometer, which has been used at BNL, will be transported to the LEPS2 beam-line in 2011. With these new developments, advanced studies of spin physics are expected in future experiments.