# What value of the magnetic moment of the muon does the standard model predict?

I’ve become intrigued by the recent results regarding the measurement of the magnetic moment of the muon, $$g$$. It appears to be 2.00233184122(82).

What does the standard model predict that $$g$$ should be?

If I wanted to repeat this calculation, where can I find the standard model? Is there a book I could check out from the library so that I could learn to repeat the calculation, or perhaps a computer program I could download to compute it for me?

• It's calculated by summing thousands of terms. A 2012 tenth-order calculation is explained here. – J.G. Apr 24 at 11:53
• This is not an easy calculation in any definition of the word. Just understanding where all the terms in the calculation come from requires several years of serious research and study (at PhD level at least.). Even after you understand what to calculate (that's the physics part), there are thousands and thousands of terms that first have to calculated (involves performing very hard integrals) and then added to each other (this is the math part). Every part of the calculation is difficult and simply "finding the standard model" will give you absolutely no clues on where to begin. – Prahar Apr 24 at 11:58
• The paper cited by @J.G. calculates the magnetic moment for the electron. A 2020 survey of magnetic moment for the muon can be found here – Prahar Apr 24 at 12:01
• I 100% agree with the other answers that you should not even try to understand the full standard model calculation of $g-2$ if you are not an expert on high-loop-order calculations in the standard model. However, a good exercise that is accessible at a beginning graduate student level is the 1-loop $g-2$ result in QED. This is done in many references, a nice, free one is the prepublication draft of Srednicki's book, available on his website. – Andrew Apr 24 at 12:05
• @PraharMitra Well-spotted, sorry about that. The paper you linked can be read for free here. – J.G. Apr 24 at 12:20