While the particle-number-conserving convolution formalism established in the
Drell-Yan-West reference frame is frequently used to compute exclusive
amplitudes in the light-front quantization, this formalism is limited to only
those frames where the light-front helicities are not changed and the good
(plus) component of the current remains unmixed. For an explicit demonstration
of such criteria, we present the relations between the current matrix elements
in the two typical reference frames used for calculations of the exclusive
amplitudes, i.e. the Drell-Yan-West and Breit frames and investigate both
pseudoscalar and vector electromagnetic currents in detail. We find that the
light-front helicities are unchanged and the good component of the current does
not mix with the other components of the current under the transformation
between these two frames. Thus, the pseudoscalar and vector form factors
obtained by the diagonal convolution formalism in both frames must indeed be
identical. However, such coincidence between the Drell-Yan-West and Breit
frames does not hold in general. We give an explicit example in which the
light-front helicities are changed and the plus component of the current is
mixed with other components under the change of reference frame. In such a
case, the relationship between the frames should be carefully analyzed before
the established convolution formalism in the Drell-Yan-West frame is used.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure
