• Opportunities and problems in determining proton and light nuclear radii

• # Fulltext

https://www.ias.ac.in/article/fulltext/pram/083/05/0761-0771

• # Keywords

Proton charge radius; electromagnetic form factors; Breit equation.

• # Abstract

We briefly review the so-called `proton puzzle’, i.e., the disagreement of the newly extracted value of the proton charge radius $r_p$ from muonic hydrogen spectroscopy with other extractions, its possible significance and related problems. After describing the conventional theory to extract the proton radius from atomic spectroscopy we focus on a novel consistent approach based on the Breit equation. With this new tool, we confirm that the radius has indeed become smaller compared to the value extracted from scattering experiments, but the existence of different theoretical approaches casts some doubt on the accuracy of the new value. Precision measurements in atomic physics do provide the opportunity to extract light nuclear radii but the accuracy is limited by the methods of incorporating the nuclear structure effects.

• # Author Affiliations

1. Department de Fisica, Cra 1E, 18A-10, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia

• # Pramana – Journal of Physics

Volume 95, 2021
All articles
Continuous Article Publishing mode

• # Editorial Note on Continuous Article Publication

Posted on July 25, 2019