# 1 INTRODUCTION

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Within a relativistic light-front (LF) constituent-quark ($`CQ`$) model, we performed an extended investigation of elastic and transition electromagnetic (e.m.) hadron form factors  in the momentum transfer region relevant for the experimental research programme at TJNAF . The main features of the model are: i) eigenstates of a mass operator which reproduces a large part of the hadron spectrum; ii) a one-body current operator with phenomenological Dirac and Pauli form factors for the $`CQ`$’s. The $`CQ`$’s are assumed to interact via the $`qq`$ potential of Capstick and Isgur ($`CI`$) , which includes a linear confining term and an effective one-gluon-exchange ($`OGE`$) term. The latter produces a huge amount of high-momentum components in the baryon wave functions  and contains a central Coulomb-like potential, a spin-dependent part, responsible for the hyperfine splitting of baryon masses, and a tensor part. A comparable amount of high momentum components was obtained (f) with the $`qq`$ interaction based on the exchange of the pseudoscalar Goldstone-bosons . This fact suggests that the hadron spectrum itself dictates the high momentum behaviour in hadron wave functions. In this paper a review of our results for the elastic and transition form factors for $`J\frac{3}{2}`$ hadrons is presented (a-g).

## 2 ELECTROMAGNETIC HADRON FORM FACTORS IN THE LF DYNAMICS

In the $`LF`$ formalism the space-like e.m. form factors can be related to the matrix elements of the plus component of the e.m. current, $`^+=^0+_z`$, in the reference frame where $`q^+=q^0+q_z=P_f^+P_i^+=0`$. We have evaluated elastic and transition form factors (f.f.) by assuming the $`^+`$ component of the e.m. current to be the sum of one-body $`CQ`$ currents , i.e. $`^+(0)_{j=1}^3I_j^+(0)=_{j=1}^3\left(e_j\gamma ^+f_1^j(Q^2)+i\kappa _j\frac{\sigma ^{+\rho }q_\rho }{2m_j}f_2^j(Q^2)\right)`$ with $`e_j`$ ($`\kappa _j`$) the charge (anomalous magnetic moment) of the j-th quark, and $`f_{1(2)}^j`$ its Dirac (Pauli) form factor. We studied first pion and nucleon elastic form factors and showed that an effective one-body e.m. current, with a suitable choice for the $`CQ`$ form factors, is able to give a coherent description of pion and nucleon experimental data (a).

In this paper our fit of the $`CQ`$ form factors is updated to describe the most recent data for the nucleon f.f., in particular for the ratio $`G_{Ep}\mu _p/G_{Mp}`$ .

In Fig. 1 the elastic proton form factors are shown, in order to illustrate the high quality fit one can reach (a fit of the same quality is obtained for the neutron and the pion as well). It is interesting to note that, while effective CQ f.f. are required to describe the nucleon f.f., the experimental data for the ratio $`G_E^p\mu _p/G_M^p`$ can also be reproduced by the current with pointlike CQ’s (see dashed line in Fig. 1 (b)). Therefore this ratio appears to be directly linked to the structure of the nucleon wave function.

## 3 NUCLEON-RESONANCE TRANSITION FORM FACTORS

Once the $`CQ`$ form factors have been determined, we can obtain parameter-free predictions for the nucleon-resonance transition form factors.

In Fig. 2 our evaluations of the helicity amplitude $`A_{1/2}`$ are shown for $`NS_{11}(1535)`$, $`S_{11}(1650)`$ and $`S_{31}(1620)`$, and compared with the results of a non-relativistic model . In the case of $`S_{31}(1620)`$ the results for $`p`$ and $`n`$ coincide (as for $`P_{33}(1232)`$), since only the isovector part of the CQ current is effective. Our predictions yield an overall agreement with available experimental data for the $`P`$-wave resonances and show a sizeable sensitivity to relativistic effects, but more accurate data are needed to reliably discriminate between different models.

Our parameter-free predictions for the $`N\mathrm{\Delta }(1232)`$ transition form factors, obtained using the prescriptions i) and ii) defined in (d), are compared with existing data in Fig. 3 (a),(b),(c). In Fig. 3 (d) the ratio between $`G_M^{N\mathrm{\Delta }}\left(Q^2\right)`$ and the isovector part of the nucleon magnetic form factor, $`G_M^p\left(Q^2\right)G_M^n\left(Q^2\right)`$, is shown to be largely insensitive to the presence of $`CQ`$ form factors, whereas it is sharply affected by the spin-dependent part of the $`CI`$ potential, which is generated by the chromomagnetic interaction. It can clearly be seen that: i) the effect of the tiny $`D`$-wave component ($`P_D^\mathrm{\Delta }=1.1\%`$), and then of the tensor part in the $`qq`$ interaction, is small for $`G_M^{N\mathrm{\Delta }}`$, as well as for $`E_1/M_1`$ and $`S_1/M_1`$ (the $`L=0`$ component gives non-zero values of $`E_1/M_1`$ and $`S_1/M_1`$, because of the relativistic nature of our calculation); ii) the effect of the spin-dependent part of the $`qq`$ interaction, which is responsible for the $`N\mathrm{\Delta }`$ mass splitting and for the different high momentum tails of the $`N`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ wave functions, is essential to reproduce the faster-than-dipole fall-off of $`G_M^{N\mathrm{\Delta }}\left(Q^2\right)`$ (see also Ref. (f)). Both these results do not depend on the prescriptions used to extract the $`N\mathrm{\Delta }`$ transition form factors.