• Accepted Paper

Radiative corrections to elastic lepton-proton scattering with focus on two-photon-exchange diagrams

Daniel Crowe, Syed Mehedi Hasan, and Doreen Wackeroth

Phys. Rev. D - Accepted 26 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/4kss-bv46

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.

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