Reduced nuclear amplitudes in quantum chromodynamics

Abstract
We present a new formalism which systematically accounts for nucleon compositeness in nuclear scattering amplitudes, consistent with quantum chromodynamics and covariance. Reduced gauge-invariant nuclear amplitudes are defined which have elementary quantum chromodynamic scaling properties. The procedure is applied to the photodisintegration and electrodisintegration of the deuteron as a test of nuclear chromodynamics and as a method to isolate contributions of dibaryon resonances.