English

Are Electron Scattering Data Consistent with a Small Proton Radius?

Nuclear Experiment 2016-06-28 v2 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

We determine the charge radius of the proton by analyzing the published low momentum transfer electron-proton scattering data from Mainz. We note that polynomial expansions of the form factor converge for momentum transfers squared below 4mπ24m_\pi^2, where mπm_\pi is the pion mass. Expansions with enough terms to fit the data, but few enough not to overfit, yield proton radii smaller than the CODATA or Mainz values and in accord with the muonic atom results. We also comment on analyses using a wider range of data, and overall obtain a proton radius RE=0.840(16R_E=0.840(16) fm.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1509.06676,
  title  = {Are Electron Scattering Data Consistent with a Small Proton Radius?},
  author = {Keith Griffioen and Carl Carlson and Sarah Maddox},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1509.06676},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

10 pages, 14 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T11:02:52.584Z