Recent Results on Probing the Deuteron at Very Short Distances

Recent experimental measurement[1] of deuteron momentum distribution in high energy exclusive electro-disintegration reaction found that starting at 750 MeV/c missing momenta the extracted distribution qualitatively disagrees with all existing deuteron momentum distributions predicted based on realistic NN potentials. At the same time calculation of the deuteron wave function on the light-front[2] resulted in the prediction of a new P-like structure in the deuteron which starts to dominate at internal momenta comparable to the nucleon mass. In the presentation we address the question whether the observed experimental anomaly is related to the predicted new structure of the deuteron and if it represents the first signature of non-nucleonic component in the deuteron.