Nucleon Electromagnetic Form Factors

Abstract

There has been much activity in the measurement of the elastic electromagnetic proton and neutron form factors in the last decade, and the quality of the data has been greatly improved by performing double polarization experiments, in comparison with previous unpolarized data. Here we review the experimental data base in view of the new results for the proton, and neutron, obtained at MIT-Bates, MAMI, and JLab. The rapid evolution of phenomenological models triggered by these high-precision experiments will be discussed, including the recent progress in the determination of the valence quark generalized parton distributions of the nucleon, as well as the steady rate of improvements made in the lattice QCD calculations.