Electron-deuteron elastic scattering at high momentum transfer

A major contribution to the scattering is expected to be given by the diagrams in which the deuteron virtually dissociates into nucleons which undergo a one-photon exchange with the electron. In this paper a calculation of the scattering as given by these diagrams is made in terms of the possible form factors that can occur at the $\gamma \mathrm{NN}$ and $\mathrm{dnp}$ vertices. The treatment is manifestly relativistic and involves no series expansion. The $\gamma \mathrm{NN}$ vertex is set up to be manifestly gauge invariant and to allow for the nucleon to be off the mass shell. The $\mathrm{dnp}$ vertex is arranged to conserve the isospin-zero property of the deuteron and to allow for both interacting and spectator nucleons to be off the mass shell. The calculation of the matrix elements leads to integrals of complicated traces of products of Dirac matrices for which a numerical-evaluation process is developed. A preliminary comparison with the experimental data is made, in which form factors consistent with $\gamma \mathrm{NN}$ scattering and with the nonrelativistic properties of the deuteron are chosen. It is found that agreement with experiment can be obtained by a variety of plausible choices of form factors.