Elastic electron–deuteron scattering in chiral effective field theory

We calculate elastic electron–deuteron scattering in a chiral effective field theory approach for few–nucleon systems based on a modified Weinberg power counting. We construct the current operators and the deuteron wave function at next-to-leading order (NLO) simultaneously within a projection formalism. The leading order comprises the impulse approximation of photons coupling to point-like nucleons with an anomalous magnetic moment. At NLO, we include renormalizations of the single nucleon operators. To this order, no unknown parameters enter. We obtain not only a satisfactory description of the deuteron structure functions and form factors measured in electron–deuteron scattering but also find a good convergence for these observables. PACS: 13.40.Gp, 13.75.Cs, 12.39.Fe