Hamiltonian light-front dynamics of elastic electron-deuteron scattering

Abstract

Relativistic calculations of elastic electromagnetic form factors of the deuteron are presented for momentum transfers up to 8 ${\mathrm{GeV}}^2$. Standard nucleon-nucleon interactions are used to construct a unitary representation of the inhomogeneous Lorentz 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. Deuteron form factors are computed in terms of matrix elements of the current operator and the deuteron wave functions. The results are compared to experiment. The size of relativistic effects, scaling behavior, sensitivity to the nucleon-nucleon interactions, and effects of the uncertainties in measured nucleon form factors are investigated.