Relativistic effects in quasifree deuteron electrodisintegration compared to a covariant model

Abstract

Deuteron disintegration by electrons is calculated in a covariant model for the quasifree region, where final-state interaction and two-body currents can be negiected, and is compared to a phenomenological approach in which one adds to the nonrelativistic one-body current relativistic contributions of lowest order and the kinematic wave-function boost. It is shown that ap/M-reduction of the relativistic theory contains the expressions of the phenomenological approach. The inclusion of relativistic contributions leads to a less frame-dependent description and the deviation from the covariant theory becomes small at low and medium energy and momentum transfers. Furthermore, the dependence of the nonrelativistic results on the current parametrization, i.e., Dirac-Pauli versus Sachs, is largely eliminated by inclusion of lowest-order relativistic contributions. Results are presented for form factors and structure functions and compared with experimental data for the inclusive reaction.