Light-front dynamics of elastic electron-deuteron scattering

This paper reports on measurements of the deuteron form factors over a wide range of momentum transfer which can provide important clues to the role of subnucleon egress of freedom in nuclear dynamics. For a meaningful calculation of the form factors it is essential that the current density of operators and the deuteron wave function transform under Lorentz transformations in a mutually consistent manner. Standard nucleon-nucleon interactions can be used to construct unitary representations of the Poincare group on the two-nucleon Hilbert space. Deuteron wave functions represent eigenstates of the four-momentum operator. Existing parametrizations of measured single-nucleon form factors are used to construct a conserved covariant electromagnetic current operator. The light-front symmetry of the representation allows a clean separation of the effects of one- and two-body currents for arbitrary momentum transfers. Comparison with data indicates that for Q2 < 8GeV2 the elastic cross sections are not dominated by two-body currents