How Small is a Proton?
Analytical solution to the proton charge radius
The proton radius, also known as “charge radius” and its anomalous magnetic moment presents one of the most difficult problems in physics today. This is despite the notion that protons themselves are the basic building blocks of our visible universe. In fact, it has been dubbed as a “puzzle’’ — the proton radius puzzle for that reason. The proton radius becomes an obvious puzzle once we internalize the fact that it (the radius) occurs between two fields: that of electron and the proton itself.
The obtained value is well within a reasonable margin of error (0.00023 %) compared to the value stored by CODATA.
Among the reasons for this difficulty, is the hindrance defined by the wave-particle duality — a phenomenon in quantum mechanics that every particle or quantum entity may be described as either a particle or a wave. But even then some considerably precise measurements based on spectroscopy of atomic hydrogen, such as those compiled and stored by the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA), are still off by at least 1%. The CODATA measurement of proton radius currently stands at 0.8768(69) femtometers or 8.76869E -16 m. It is normally presented as the root-mean-square of its charge…
