Physicists make most precise measurement ever of the proton’s magnetic moment

An international collaboration of scientists from RIKEN’s Ulmer Fundamental Symmetries Laboratory (FSL), Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, Heidelberg and GSI Darmstadt, have used high-precision techniques to make the most precise measurement to date of the magnetic moment of the proton, finding it to be 2.79284734462 plus or minus 0.00000000082 nuclear magnetons, the unit typically used to measure this property. The magnetic moment, a property of particles that gives rise to magnetism, is one of the fundamental properties of the proton and is key to understanding properties such as the structure of atoms.