Deuteron Electromagnetic Properties with a Poincar\'e-Covariant Current Operator within Front-Form Hamiltonian Dynamics

Abstract

Deuteron elastic and deep inelastic electromagnetic properties have been studied within the front-form Hamiltonian dynamics, using a Poincar\'e-covariant current operator. The deuteron elastic form factors are strongly sensitive to different realistic $N-N$ interactions, while the relevance of different nucleon form factor models is huge for $A(Q^2)$, weak for $B(Q^2)$ and negligible for the tensor polarization. The possibility to gain information on the neutron charge form factor from an analysis of $A(Q^2)$ has been investigated. The extraction of the neutron structure functions from the deuteron deep inelastic structure functions at high $x$ is largely affected by the use of our Poincar\'e-covariant relativistic approach instead of the usual impulse approximation within an instant-form approach.