Deuteron gravitational form factors: Exchange currents

Following on our recent analysis of the energy momentum tensor (EMT) of light nuclei in the impulse approximation, we evaluate the leading exchange corrections also up to momenta of the order of the nucleon mass. The exchange contributions to the EMT are composed of the pair interaction, plus the seagull and the pion exchange interactions, modulo the recoil correction. The exchange contributions are shown to satisfy the current conservation requirement. These contributions are small compared to those from the impulse approximation for most of the deuteron gravitational form factors (GFFs), for momenta smaller than half of the nucleon mass. For larger momenta, the exchange contributions are significant for the deuteron A- and D-GFFs. We suggest that the pion GFFs can be extracted from the exchange contributions of select deuteron GFFs.