Use in Measurement of The Proton Charge Radius
The recent culmination of a twelve year experiment at investigating the proton's charge radius involved the use of muonic hydrogen. This form of hydrogen is composed of a muon orbiting a proton. The Lamb shift in muonic hydrogen was measured by driving the muon from its 2s state up to an excited 2p state using a laser. The frequency of the photon required to induce this transition was revealed to be 50 terahertz which, according to present theories of quantum electrodynamics, yields a value of 0.84184 ± 0.00067 femtometres for the charge radius of the proton.
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