Relativistic Effects in Electromagnetic Meson–Exchange Currents

Following recent studies of non–relativistic reductions of the single–nucleon electromagnetic current operator, here we extend the treatment to include meson exchange current operators. In contrast to the traditional scheme where approximations are made for the transferred momentum, transferred energy and momenta of the initial–state struck nucleons, we treat the problem exactly for the transferred energy and momentum, thus obtaining new current operators which retain important aspects of relativity not taken into account in the traditional non–relativistic reductions. We calculate the matrix elements of our current operators between the Fermi sphere and a particle–hole state for several choices of kinematics. We present a comparison between our results using approximate current operators and those obtained using the fully–relativistic operators, as well as with results obtained using the strict non–relativistic current operators. PACS numbers: 25.20.Lj, 25.30.Fj, 25.10+s 1