Poincaré Covariant Current Operator and Elastic Electron - Deuteron Scattering in the Front - form Hamiltonian Dynamics

The deuteron electromagnetic form factors, A(Q 2) and B(Q 2), and the tensor polarization T 20 (Q 2), are unambiguously calculated within the front-form relativis-tic Hamiltonian dynamics, by using a novel current, built up from one-body terms, which fulfills Poincaré, parity and time reversal covariance, together with Hermiticity and the continuity equation. A simultaneous description of the experimental data for the three deuteron form factors is achieved up to Q 2 < 0.4(GeV /c) 2. At higher momentum transfer, different nucleon-nucleon interactions strongly affect A(Q 2), B(Q 2), and T 20 (Q 2) and the effects of the interactions can be related to S-state kinetic energy in the deuteron. Different nucleon form factor models have huge effects on A(Q 2), smaller effects on B(Q 2) and essentially none on T 20 (Q 2).