Proton Charge Radius (PRad) Experiment at Jefferson Lab

Abstract

The puzzle of proton charge radius was recently raised by the measurement of muonic hydrogen Lamb shift at Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), whose results were seven standard deviations smaller than the CODATA recommended value. To investigate this discrepancy, the PRad experiment was proposed and approved at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab). The experiment will extract the proton charge radius with a sub-percent accuracy by measuring the cross-sections of unpolarized electronproton elastic scattering in an unprecedented low Q2 region (2×10−4 GeV2/c2).