Model Independent Analysis of the Proton Magnetic Radius

Abstract

The proton is a fundamental constituent of matter. It is an extended object with finite size that can be inferred with some degree of accuracy from several measurements. Using constraints from the analytic behavior of the form factors we present here a model-independent study that extracts the proton magnetic radius from scattering data. From electron-proton scattering data we find $r_M^p = 0.91_{-0.06}^{+0.03} \pm 0.02$ fm. When we include electron-neutron scattering data and $\pi\pi$ data, we find $r_M^p = 0.87_{-0.05}^{+0.04}\pm 0.01$ fm and $r_M^p =0.87_{-0.02}^{+0.02}$ fm respectively. The neutron magnetic radius is extracted as $r_M^n = 0.89_{-0.03}^{+0.03}$ fm combining all three data sets.