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Pedagogical introduction demonstrates charge distribution in neutral particles, suggesting physics education needs better coverage.
In the physics curriculum, students normally learn about Rutherford scattering from charged particles in classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, and quantum field theory. This paper provides a pedagogical introduction to the problem of scattering from neutral particles, characterizing an effective charge distribution by a charge radius. Using the Born approximation, the quantum mechanical and field theoretic calculations agree to leading order in the long-wavelength limit but disagree with the classical calculation.
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Ketterer et al. (2025) studied this question.
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