English

Charge radii of the nucleon from its flavor dependent Dirac form factors

Nuclear Experiment 2021-02-24 v3

Abstract

We have determined the proton and the neutron charge radii from a global analysis of the proton and the neutron elastic form factors, after first performing a flavor decomposition of these form factors under charge symmetry in the light cone frame formulation. We then extracted the transverse mean-square radii of the flavor dependent quark distributions. In turn, these are related in a model-independent way to the proton and neutron charge radii but allow us to take into account motion effects of the recoiling nucleon for data at finite but high momentum transfer. In the proton case we find rp=0.852±0.002(stat.)±0.009(syst.) (fm)\langle r_p \rangle = 0.852 \pm0.002_{\rm (stat.)} \pm0.009_{\rm (syst.)}~({\rm fm}), consistent with the proton charge radius obtained from muonic hydrogen spectroscopy \cite{pohl:2010,antog2013}. The current method improves on the precision of the rp\langle r_p \rangle extraction based on the form factor measurements. Furthermore, we find no discrepancy in the rp\langle r_p \rangle determination among the different electron scattering measurements, all of which, utilizing the current method of extraction, result in a value that is consistent with the smallest rp\langle r_p \rangle extraction from the electron scattering measurements \cite{Xiong:2019umf}. Concerning the neutron case, past results relied solely on the neutron-electron scattering length measurements, which suffer from an underestimation of underlying systematic uncertainties inherent to the extraction technique. Utilizing the present method we have performed the first extraction of the neutron charge radius based on nucleon form factor data, and we find rn2=0.122±0.004(stat.)±0.010(syst.) (fm2)\langle r_n^2 \rangle = -0.122 \pm0.004_{\rm (stat.)} \pm0.010_{\rm (syst.)}~({\rm fm}^2).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2009.04357,
  title  = {Charge radii of the nucleon from its flavor dependent Dirac form factors},
  author = {H. Atac and M. Constantinou and Z. -E. Meziani and M. Paolone and N. Sparveris},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2009.04357},
  year   = {2021}
}