Lorentz Contracted Proton

Abstract

The proton charge and magnetization density distributions can be related to the well known Sachs electromagnetic form factors $G_{E,M}({\bm q}^{2})$ through Fourier transforms, only in the Breit frame. The Breit frame however moves with relativistic velocities in the Lab and a Lorentz boost must be applied to the form factors before extracting the static properties of the proton from the corresponding densities. Apart from this, the Fourier transform relating the densities and form factors is inherently a non-relativistic expression. We show that the relativistic corrections to it can be obtained by extending the standard Breit equation to higher orders in its $1/c^2$ expansion. We find that the inclusion of the above corrections reduces the size of the proton determined from electron proton scattering data. Indeed the central value of the latest proton radius of $r_p = 0.879$ fm as determined from e-p scattering changes to $r_p = 0.8404$ fm after applying corrections.