Radiative Corrections to Elastic Lepton-Proton Scattering with Focus on Two-Photon-Exchange Diagrams
Abstract
Lepton (electron and muon) scattering experiments are excellent tools to gain insight into the nucleon structure. Elastic electron-proton scattering probes the spatial distribution of charge and magnetization inside the proton, and comparing electron-proton and muon-proton scattering data tests lepton universality. The availability of a plethora of scattering data with increased precision and observed discrepancies such as the proton form factor puzzle and the proton radius puzzle motivated a renewed effort to improve the theoretical framework. Realizing that the one-photon-exchange approximation (OPE), i.~e. the Born approximation, is not sufficient, radiative corrections in QED, especially the two-photon-exchange (TPE) diagrams, are under investigation. The TPE diagrams are of special interest among the radiative corrections, since their hadronic-structure-dependent contribution generates an additional dependence of the cross section on the virtual-photon polarization parameter beyond the Born approximation that is not captured by standard model-independent radiative correction procedures, and that directly impacts the extraction of proton form factors. In this work, we present a complete calculation of QED radiative corrections to elastic electron-proton and muon-proton scattering at next-to-leading order, taking into account loop-momentum-dependent form factors. In the discussion of their numerical impact on lepton-proton scattering cross sections, we pay special attention to the elastic nucleon contribution to the TPE diagrams and compare them with existing theoretical predictions and lepton-proton scattering data.
Versions
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BibTeX
@misc{crowe2026radiative,
title = {{Radiative Corrections to Elastic Lepton-Proton Scattering with Focus on Two-Photon-Exchange Diagrams}},
author = {Daniel Crowe and Syed Mehedi Hasan and Doreen Wackeroth},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2605.31123},
eprint = {2605.31123},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.31123},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Radiative Corrections to Elastic Lepton-Proton Scattering with Focus on Two-Photon-Exchange Diagrams
AU - Daniel Crowe
AU - Syed Mehedi Hasan
AU - Doreen Wackeroth
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/27
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2605.31123
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.31123
AB - Lepton (electron and muon) scattering experiments are excellent tools to gain insight into the nucleon structure. Elastic electron-proton scattering probes the spatial distribution of charge and magnetization inside the proton, and comparing electron-proton and muon-proton scattering data tests lepton universality. The availability of a plethora of scattering data with increased precision and observed discrepancies such as the proton form factor puzzle and the proton radius puzzle motivated a renewed effort to improve the theoretical framework. Realizing that the one-photon-exchange approximation (OPE), i.~e. the Born approximation, is not sufficient, radiative corrections in QED, especially the two-photon-exchange (TPE) diagrams, are under investigation. The TPE diagrams are of special interest among the radiative corrections, since their hadronic-structure-dependent contribution generates an additional dependence of the cross section on the virtual-photon polarization parameter beyond the Born approximation that is not captured by standard model-independent radiative correction procedures, and that directly impacts the extraction of proton form factors. In this work, we present a complete calculation of QED radiative corrections to elastic electron-proton and muon-proton scattering at next-to-leading order, taking into account loop-momentum-dependent form factors. In the discussion of their numerical impact on lepton-proton scattering cross sections, we pay special attention to the elastic nucleon contribution to the TPE diagrams and compare them with existing theoretical predictions and lepton-proton scattering data.
ER -