Elastic Electron - Deuteron Scattering at High Energy

Relativistic formulae for the deuteron electromagnetic form factors are calculated in the impulse approximation retaining terms to all orders in Q2/M2 z wc>2. The formulae are given as double integrals over the deuteron wave functions in momentum space, and hence can be evaluated for any deuteron model. We evaluate these formulae numerically for 9 different deuteron models: Reid soft core, two Lomon-Feshbach models, three Holinde-Machleidt models, and three four-component relativistic models. All of the models give results for the A structure function considerably below the experimental results; the effect of the relativistic treatment is to reduce the size of A by a factor of 2 to 5 at Q2 -2 of 100 fm over what it would be in the nonrelativistic approximation. We discuss breifly the role of exchange currents; the pair terms are included in our calculation in a completely consistent manner, but the explicit pFy contributions need to be calculated relativistically. We discuss in some detail the sensitivity of our calculation to the almost unknown neutron electric form factor, observing that a GRn roughly twice -2 G RP in the region of Q2 =lOO fm would enable us to fit the data even without any PITY contributions. We discuss the high Q2 limits of our formulae, obtaining the result that the form factor falls one power of Qz faster than that predicted by the dimensional scaling quark model. We also study the low QL limits and give explicit formulae for the corrections to the deuteron magnetic and quadrupole moments. -3