Abstract
The present status of meson-exchange currents for the most interesting electromagnetic transitions is discussed in detail. We shall see that a consistent description in the context of the meson-exchange model for the nucleon-nucleon potential is now possible and very successful. As a starting point, the nuclear wave functions of the two- and three-body systems are discussed from a qualitative point of view. The meson-exchange current operators are then derived in the soft-pion limit and further extended at high momentum transfer via an effective model Lagrangian. Typical experimental results involving real and virtual photons in the two- and three-body systems are presented and interpreted in terms of one- and two-body electromagnetic operators. Contributions of meson-exchange currents in heavy nuclei are discussed, and the connections with the present relativistic description of nuclear systems are given. Finally, the most interesting corrections of the electromagnetic operators arising from new degrees of freedom in the nuclear wave function (e.g. quarks and gluons), or from the particular topological structure of the nucleon are reviewed.
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