Abstract
Polarization obserables in elastic electron-deuteron scattering are predicted and compared with recent experimental data. Particular attention is paid to the tensor-deuteron analyzing power T(20) and the beam-vector-deuteron analyzing power T(11)(e) because of their importance in extracting the deuteron electromagnetic form factors which provide an intuitive picture of the internal deuteron structure. This study is made possible with the advent of recent polarization measurements at JLab and MIT-Bates with polarized electron beam and polarized deuteron target. The sensitivity of the results to deuteron wave functions of different high-precision N N potentials is investigated. We found that the analyzing powers, predicted using different N N potentials, agree with one another and with experimental data. The T(20) asymmetry is found to be slightly dependent on the electron scattering angle up to theta(e) similar or equal to 120 degrees, whereas the analyzing power T(11)(e) is found to be sensitive to the electron angle.