Off-shell behaviour of theN-N interaction in a six-quark resonating group model of the deuteron

Two different 6-quark resonating group models of the deuteron are investigated to study the off-shell property of theN-N interaction. In the first model the quarks interact by a central one-gluon-exchange potential plus confinement potential. The meson-exchange contribution to then-p potential is simulated by a central GaussianN-N potential. In the second model the quarks interact by one-gluon-and one-pion-exchange potentials (central and noncentral) plus confinement potential. A small additional -exchange potential between neutron and proton binds the deuteron at the correct energy.Several off-shell variants of the two resonating group models are compared with each other by analyzing their elastic electron scattering cross sections. It is found that the standard renormalized version of the resonating group model yields potentials and wave functions that may be considered physical within the limitations of the model. Unitary off-shell transformations, which modify potentials and wave functions in any sizeable way, lead to a disagreement between the charge distribution predicted by the model via analysis of electron scattering and the charge distribution following from the microscopic quark distribution.Both of the 6-quark models support a soft repulsive core of the tripletn-p potential with a core height of around 900 MeV.