Elastic Electron-Deuteron Scattering at High Momentum Transfer

Abstract

We show that a careful conventional treatment of exchange currents in the calculation of the deuteron form factor [$0<~q^2<~8$ ${(\mathrm{G}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}/\mathit{c})}^2$] is not in contradiction with experiment. It rather shows an overall good agreement. We propose measurements of the deuteron form factor at momentum transfer much higher than $q^2\cong 100$ ${\mathrm{fm}}^{-2\mathrm{}}$ in order to obtain valuable information on the neutron form factor.