We all know the Bohr radius and the classical electron radius.
However no one has yet pinpointed the radius of the free electron.
experimental data to date suggest it is less than 10^-18 m.
This is a crucial question to understanding electron structure
If electron has radius, it must have structure. Otherwise we have contrudiction with special relativity.
The free proton radius is thought to be known quite accurately at 0.8768 x 10^-15 m.
@Eugene, So yes the electron has a radius and structure.
The question is what is the radius of the free electron
@Abhijith. Yes the orbital electron has a probability density distribution, and the averaged orbital radius is known as the Bohr radius.
But like the proton the free electron will have a much tighter and smaller value.
So the question remains what is the radius of the free electron
Dear Andrew,
many people question existence of free electron, quarks, photons and so on.
@Eugene
If the hydrogen ion (free proton) with a specific radius exists, then so should the free electron. In any case few deny the existance of photons.
The standard model predicts the radius of the free electron as infinitessimal, or specifically an infinitessimal point particle with a probability density distribution.
This is difficult to swallow and what I am hoping to detemine is the radius of the free electron.
Andrew,
many deny the existence of photons.
Firstly, pointness may be characteristic of event (interection), not free elementary particle.
Secondly, at the scale of classical electron radius geometry should be reconsidered.
Regards,
Eugene.
P.S. Nobody asks, what is the radius of photon.
Eugene
Yes I agree the classical radius is still an option,
That being so why has the classical electron radius been rejected?
The electron radius is not crucial to understand anything in modern physics. That's why not many are asking this question.
You can come up with some conceptual work to try and estimate electron's radius, but you have to make a number of far-fetched assumptions, that make no sense from the practical point of view and will lead you nowhere. Like here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_electron_radius
Spin, magnetic moment and, partly, charge are geometrically understandable properties of electron. It's mass also can be treated geometrically. It's radius appears only when we are considering it's interactions and is approximated by delta function, which evidently has no sense for free electron.
What we must do first of all is to solve Kepler problem for hydrogen atom with coupled electromagnetic field.
I know this is coming late but allow me to introduce you to something I learned a while ago: For any particle, system of particles be it classical or quantum, its radius is given by r=√(Gm/g), where G is the Newtonian universal gravitational constant, m the mass, and g = 9.80665. For an electron as a non-point particle, r = 2.49E-21 m.
Electron may have no radius at all been special point of electromagnetic field.
Eugene F Kislyakov that is one school of thought that is widely accepted. The original poster says quote "experimental data to date suggest it is less than 10^-18 m", so I guess we have to accept that some people have queried this to an extent of experimenting on it.
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