Scattering of 192-Mev Electrons from the Deuteron

Elastic scattering of 192-Mev electrons from deuterium has been studied using both solid (CD₂) and high-pressure gas targets. The results obtained by these two methods are in agreement and yield the following conclusions: (1) The range of the neutron-proton potential is between 1 and 4×{}10^-13 cm if a square potential well is assumed and if the deuteron wave functions predicted by the binding energy of the deuteron are used. (2) It is, however, impossible with the present data to eliminate the possibility of other charge distributions for deuterium such as uniform or Gaussian.Inelastic electron scattering from deuterium was also investigated, and promises to give independent information of the deuteron structure.