ABSTRACT
This chapter explains very briefly the simplest meson-exchange currents that are of importance to the deuteron. The nuclear force between two nucleons may be regarded as arising from the exchanges of mesons between them. The chapter discusses the electron which can interact with a nucleon by the exchange of a virtual photon—the photon carries an electromagnetic field which couples with the nucleonic current. The tensor force will produce polarization, for in the two cases in which the spins of incident and target nucleons are parallel or antiparallel, the tensor force will have opposite signs and will produce entirely different angular distributions. The chapter points out that the impact parameter governs the scattering of partial waves and that the higher-angular-momentum components of an incident wave are not scattered at all by the nuclear force at low energies. In any scattering experiment, the particles are detected only when they have come out of the force range of the target.
