Advanced extraction of the deuteron charge radius from electron-deuteron scattering data

Abstract

To extract the charge radius of the proton, $r_p$, from the electron scattering data, the PRad collaboration at Jefferson Lab has developed a rigorous framework for finding the best functional forms - the fitters - for a robust extraction of $r_p$ from a wide variety of sample functions for the range and uncertainties of the PRad data. In this paper we utilize and further develop this framework. Herein we discuss methods for searching for the best fitter candidates as well as a procedure for testing the robustness of extraction of the deuteron charge radius, $r_d$, from parametrizations based on elastic electron-deuteron scattering data. The ansatz proposed in this paper for the robust extraction of $r_d$, for the proposed low-$Q^2$ DRad experiment at Jefferson Lab, can be further improved once there are more data.

Comments: 14 pages, 3 tables and 9 figures