Puzzling out the proton radius puzzle

Abstract

The discrepancy between the proton charge radius extracted from the muonic hydrogen Lamb shift measurement and the best present value obtained from the elastic scattering experiments, remains unexplained and represents a burning problem of today’s nuclear physics: after more than 50 years of research the radius of a basic constituent of matter is still not understood. This paper presents a summary of the best existing proton radius measurements, followed by an overview of the possible explanations for the observed inconsistency between the hydrogen and the muonic-hydrogen data. In the last part the upcoming experiments, dedicated to remeasuring the proton radius, are described.