Eur. Phys. J. A (2015) 51: 156
https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/i2015-15156-2

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

The Lamb shift in muonic hydrogen and the proton radius from effective field theories

Grup de Física Teòrica, Dept. Fısica and IFAE, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, E-08193, Bellaterra (Barcelona), Spain

^* e-mail: peset@ifae.es

Received: 15 August 2015
Accepted: 27 October 2015
Published online: 3 December 2015

Abstract

We comprehensively analyse the theoretical prediction for the Lamb shift in muonic hydrogen, and the associated determination of the proton radius. We use effective field theories. This allows us to relate the proton radius with well-defined objects in quantum field theory, eliminating unnecessary model dependence. The use of effective field theories also helps us to organize the computation so that we can clearly state the parametric accuracy of the result. In this paper we review all (and check several of) the contributions to the energy shift of order , as well as those that scale like logarithms in the context of non-relativistic effective field theories of QED.