Experimental Investigation of High-Energy Photon Splitting in Atomic Fields

Data analysis of an experiment in which photon splitting in atomic fields was observed is presented. The experiment was performed at the tagged photon beam of the ROKK-1M facility at the VEPP-4M collider. In the energy region of 120-450 MeV, statistics of 1.6x10(9) photons incident on the BGO target was collected. About 400 candidate photon-splitting events were reconstructed. Within the attained experimental accuracy, the experimental results are consistent with the calculated exact atomic-field cross section. The predictions obtained in the Born approximation differ significantly from the experimental results.