Non-Perturbative Lepton Sea Fermions in the Nucleon and the Proton Radius Puzzle

TL;DR

This paper investigates the non-perturbative lepton-pair content in the proton as a potential explanation for the proton radius puzzle, finding it unlikely to be the cause due to the magnitude of the effect and diagram features.

Contribution

It evaluates the lepton-pair content in the proton and assesses its viability as an explanation for the proton radius puzzle, providing quantitative analysis and ruling out this hypothesis.

Findings

Lepton-pair content in the proton is of order 10(rac{ ext{ extalpha}}{ ext{ extpi}})^2.

Such lepton-pair content is insufficient to explain the proton radius puzzle.

Contact interaction models for the puzzle are also analyzed.

Abstract

A potential explanation [U.~D.~Jentschura, Phys.\ Rev.\ A {\bf 88}, 062514 (2013)] of the proton radius puzzle originating from the non-perturbative lepton-pair content of the proton is studied. Well-defined quantities that depend on this lepton-pair content are evaluated. Each is found to be of the order of $10({\alpha\over \pi})^2$, so that we find such a lepton-pair content exists in the proton. However, we argue that this relatively large result and general features of loop diagrams rule out the possibility of lepton-pair content as an explanation of the proton radius puzzle. In addition, the contributions of a class of explanations of the proton radius puzzle (for which the dependence on the $\mu p$ relative distance is as a contact interaction) is determined.