High precision measurement of the proton charge radius: The PRad experiment

Abstract

The recent high precision measurements of the proton charge radius performed at PSI from muonic hydrogen Lamb shift puzzled the hadronic physics community. A value of 0.8418 ± 0.0007 fm was extracted which is 7σ smaller than the previous determinations obtained from electron-proton scattering experiments and based on precision spectroscopy of electronic hydrogen. An additional extraction of the proton charge radius from electron scattering at Mainz is also in good agreement with these "electronic" determinations. An independent measurement of the proton charge radius from unpolarized elastic ep scattering using a magnetic spectrometer free method was proposed and fully approved at Jefferson Laboratory in June 2012. This novel technique uses the high precision calorimeter HyCal and a windowless hydrogen gas target which makes possible the extraction of the charge radius at very forward angles and thus very low momentum transfer Q2 up to 10−4 (GeV/c)2 with an unprecedented sub-percent precision for this type of experiment. In this paper, after a review of the recent progress on the proton charge radius extraction and the new high precision experiment PRad will be presented.