New work may solidify a critical benchmark
新的探索方向或许可以巩固一个关键的基础理论点。
Scientists love precision. They can measure the distance from Earth to the moon to within a couple of centimeters and the spins of far-off pulsars to fractions of a millisecond. When peering inside a nearby atom, however, that kind of precision is harder to come by. Consider protons, the positively charged chunks of matter found in every atomic nucleus. Physicists have been trying to pin down their size for more than half a century, but it has proved fiendishly difficult—and conflicting measurements have left researchers scratching their heads. Now an ultraprecise measurement at York University in Toronto may finally have tamed the proton.
科学家追求精确，他们将地球到月球测量的距离精确到了几厘米的误差内，并且将遥远的脉冲星自转精确到了十分之一毫秒。再将目标视角转到原子时，然而这种精度却很难达到。考虑质子的情况，在每个原子核中找到了带正电荷的物质。物理学家开始尝试了超过半个世纪去确定它们的大小，但是这被证明了极其困难，并且相悖的测量结果使研究人员绞尽脑汁。现在，在多伦多的约克大学中一个超精密的测量工具或许终于捕捉到了质子。
Protons are, of course, tiny—less than two trillionths of a millimeter across—so teasing out their radius requires exacting techniques. Researchers can fire a beam of electrons at a hydrogen atom, whose nucleus consists of a single proton; the angles at which the electrons bounce off the proton are determined by its size. Another strategy relies on spectroscopy, which measures the intensity of the radiation at various frequencies that an object emits. Scientists can excite a hydrogen atom’s electron so it jumps from one energy state to the next and then carefully track the frequency of the radiation needed to drive this transition.The size of the “gap” between the energy levels depends on the proton’s size.
当然，质子的直径小于2万亿分之一毫米，所以确定它的半径需要更加严格的技术。研究人员可以向氢原子发射一个电子束，氢原子的原子核由一个质子组成，电子与质子的反弹角度取决于质子的质量。而另一种方式则依赖于光谱学，它在在各种频率下测量一个物体发出的辐射强度。科学家激发一个氢原子的电子，让它从一个能态跃迁到下一个能态，并仔细跟踪驱动放射物发生这种转变所需要的频率。能态跃迁时能级的改变强度取决于质子的大小。
Measurements dating back to the 1950s, from work using both methods, set the proton’s radius at an apparent 0.88 femtometer (a femtometer is 10–15 meter). In 2010 researchers led by Randolf Pohl, then at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, tried something differ ent. They used the spectroscopic method but with special “muonic” hydrogen: in stead of an electron, this atom containsa muon, a particle with about 200 times the mass of an electron. Because the muon hugs the proton more tightly than an elec tron would, its energy levels are more sensitive to proton size, promising more accurate results. Plus, the particular transition they studied (in which the muon jumps from its first excited state to its second) leads more directly to the proton radius than other transitions. Pohl and his team were surprised to find a lower value for the radius, pegging it at 0.84 femtometer—well outside the range of potential sizes established by earlier measurements.
这两种方法的使用时间都可以追溯到1950年，将质子半径设置为0.88毫微微米，在2010年由Randolf Pohl领导的研究团队，他们在在德国加兴的马克斯·普朗克量子光学研究所，尝试了一些不同的东西。他们使用了光谱法，但是使用了特殊的u介子‘氢’代替了电子，这个原子所包含的u介子的质量是电子质量200倍，而且u介子比电子更加紧贴着质子，它的能级对质子大小更加敏感，需要更多准确的结果。另外，他们研究的特殊跃迁（从激发状态的转变导致u介子的跃迁）更为直接的发现了质子的半径对跃迁的影响。Pohl和它的团队惊讶的发现半径值更低，将其确定在0.84毫微微米，这大大超出了在早期的测量中确立的潜在半径大小。
Pohl’s result sent the head scratching into high gear. Was something wrong with the earlier experiments? Or is there something peculiar about how protons interact with muons, compared with their behavior around electrons? That was the most intriguing possibility: that some as yet unknown physics, which might require a tweak to the socalled Standard Model, was at play.
Pohl’s的结果使人困惑。在一些早期实现中是否有一些问题？有一些关于质子和u介子结合后后的情况和与它周围的电子反应相比，有什么特殊之处？这是一个最有趣的可能性：这是至今物理学未知的问题，这可能需要对现有的物理标准模型进行调整后再进行探索。
“When there’s a discrepancy in the data, it really gets people excited,” says David Newell, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithers burg, Md., whose work has focused on pinning down the value of Planck’s constant, another crucial parameter in atomic physics.
马里兰州盖瑟斯堡国家标准与技术研究所的物理学家David Newell说道：“当试验的结果与既定猜想的数据有差异时真的让人感到兴奋“，他的工作重点是确定普朗克常数（https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%99%AE%E6%9C%97%E5%85%8B%E5%B8%B8%E6%95%B0/812256）的值，而它是原子物理学中的另一个重要参数。
The discrepancy caught the attention of Eric Hessels, head of the York team, who a decade ago was at the workshop where Pohl first presented his results. Hessels took Pohl’s findings as something of a personal challenge and worked to replicate the experiment—right down to the particular energylevel transition—using regular instead of muonic hydrogen. This jump is known as the Lamb shift (for physicist Willis Lamb, who first measured it in the 1940s). A precise measurement of the Lamb shift in regular hydrogen seemed guaranteed to reveal something of interest. If it matched the earlier, larger value, it might point the way to new physics; if it matched the lower value, it would help pin down the size of the proton, solving a decade sold puzzle.
这个矛盾的试验数据引起了约克大学负责人Eric Hessels的注意，十年前Eric Hessels参加了Pohl首次发表了它的结果的研讨会。Hessels说Pohl’s的发现对一些人来说是一个挑战，并对结果进行了重复试验论证-一直到特定的能级跃迁-使用了常规的电子而不是u介子氢。这个跃迁叫做兰姆位移（https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%85%B0%E5%A7%86%E7%A7%BB%E4%BD%8D/2685520）（由物理学家Willis Lamb在1940年测量出）。对常规氢中兰姆位移的精确测量似乎肯定能从里面发现一些有趣的东西。如果这个结果比之前更早，更大的值匹配，它或许会为一种新物理指明一条道路。如果这个值与预期的更小，它将有助于确定质子的大小，解决一个物理学家困惑十年的难题。
It took Hessels eight years to find the answer. “It was a more difficult measure ment than I anticipated,” he says, “and more difficult than any other measurement that we’ve taken on in our lab.” He used radio frequency radiation to excite hydrogen atoms, noting the precise frequency at which the radiation drove the electron energy jump associated with the Lamb shift. In the end, his team determined that the proton’s radius is 0.833 femtometer, plus or minus 0.010 femtometer—which agrees with Pohl’s measurement. Science published the results in September.
Hessels花费了8年时间去寻早答案，他说：“实验并没有预期的简单，比我们在实验室进行的其他任何测量都要困难”。他使用射频辐射去激发氢原子，注意到辐射驱使的氢原子与兰姆位移相关的电子能量跃迁的精确频率，最后，他的团队确定了质子的半径是0.833±0.01毫微微米-这个结果与Pohl’s的测量结果一致。《科学》杂志在9月发布了这项成果。
In an age of “big science”—think of the Large Hadron Collider and its tunnel’s 27kilometer circumference—physicists may take some comfort in the fact that such important results can still be obtained with tabletop experiments. Hessels’s setup fit in a
single room on York’s campus.
在现在这个“科学迸发”的时代-大型强子对撞机和它长达27千米的圆周隧道。而Hessels’s在约克大学的一个房间里就完成了试验设备的安装和调试，并得到最终的测量数据，如此重要的结果仍然可以通过相对简易的方式获得，或许会给物理学家一些宽慰。
It is unclear why previous experiments produced a larger value for the proton’s radius. Errors in experimental design are one possibility, researchers suggest. Another possibility—seemingly less likely, in light of Hessels’s measurement—is that unknown physics still skews the results.
目前还不清楚为什么以前的实验会产生更大的质子半径值。研究人员认为实验设计可能是一种错误。而另一种看起来更小的可能：根据Hessels’s的测量是一个未知的物理现象导致了结果的偏差。
The York finding’s precision and closeness to the 2010 figure suggest a consensus forming around the lower value for the proton radius.“There are now a number of measurements, and they’re starting to line up with the muonic hydrogen measurement,” Hessels says. “So the controversy is starting to diminish.”
约克大学试验结果的精度和接近于2010年的结果数值和质子半径低值数据一致。Hessels 说：“现在有一些新的测量方法，然后他们开始与u介子-氢的测量方法一致，所以现在争议开始变少了”
Diminish but not disappear: As good as Hessels’s result is—it is one of the best spectroscopic measurements achieved with normal hydrogen—Pohl’s measurement is more precise because of the greater sensitivity of the muonic hydrogen method. This finding means there is room for even more sensitive experiments, researchers say.
争议变得减少但并不意味着消失：实际上Hessels’s 的研究结果是：它是以普通氢完成的最适合光谱学的测量之一，Pohl的测量因为使用了更敏感的u介子氢方法使得结果更加精确 。研究人员说：这个发现意味着这个测量结果还可以进行更加敏感测试的空间。
Meanwhile there are other secrets the proton has yet to give up. For starters, we know protons and neutrons both consist of three quarks bound by the strong nuclear force—but the exact nature of that binding is poorly under stood, says Nilanga Liyanage, a physicist at the University of Virginia.
Virginia大学的物理学家Nilanga Liyanage说：与此同时科学家仍然在探索着质子的其他奥秘。首先，我们知道质子和中子都是由被强核力束缚的3个夸克组成，但是人们对这种约束原因知之甚少。
“Protons are the stuff we’re made of,” says Liyanage, who has tackled the proton radius puzzle through electron scattering experiments at the Jefferson Lab in Virginia. And “99.9 percent of our mass-of ourselves, of everything in the universe—comes from protons and neutrons.” The proton radius is a critical benchmark quantity, he adds: “It’s a very important particle, and we need to understand it.” —Dan Falk
Liyanage说：质子是组成我们的物质，她在Virginia大学的Jefferson实验室使用电子散射试验解决了质子半径谜题。我们自身质量和在宇宙中所有物质的99.9%都来自于质子和中子。质子的半径是一个关键的基准量（单位），它是一个很重要的粒子，我们需要对它研究透彻。—Dan Falk
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