Pair currents and constituent quark models

Summary

We derive explicit expressions for the meson exchange pair currents in the framework of the constituent quark model, taking fully into account the antisymmetrization of the six-quark states, which form the correlated nucleon pairs, and evaluating the vertex functions in terms of the internal quark momentum distribution. We discuss the mapping of the pair current operators from the quark space to the nucleon one, defining effective electromagnetic operators which can be used in practice, in particular for the evaluation of the form factors of the few-nucleon systems.