Speaker
John Martens
(University of Kansas)
Description
Recent experiments indicate the proton radius in muonic hydrogen is about 4% smaller than the proton radius in ‘ordinary’ hydrogen. Previous analysis puts the size of the discrepancy at 7 sigma if the 'ordinary' radius is calculated from a combination of spectroscopy and electron-proton scattering data. Same analysis however is found to be excessively sensitive to a single transition whose theoretical uncertainty is hundreds to thousands of times larger than its experimental uncertainty. We delete this transition as an "outlier" and perform an independent analysis using a simple, transparent procedure where the relation between procedural decisions, data, and theory inputs on final outputs can be readily monitored. Such an approach revises the discrepancy to 2.5-3.5 sigma.
Authors
John Martens
(University of Kansas)
John Ralston
(University of Kansas)
