Meson exchange effects in elastic ep scattering at loop level and the electromagnetic form factors of the proton

A new form of two-photon exchange(TPE) effect is studied to explain the discrepancy between unpolarized and polarized experimental data in elastic $ep$ scattering. The mechanism is based on a simple idea that apart from the usual TPE effects from box and crossed-box diagrams, the mesons may also be exchanged in elastic $ep$ scattering by two-photon coupling at loop level. The detailed study shows such contributions to reduced unpolarized cross section ($\sigma_{un}$) and polarized observables ($P_t,P_l$) at fixed $Q^2$ are only dependent on proton's electromagnetic form factors $G_{E,M}$ and a new unknown universal parameter $g$. After combining this contribution with the usual TPE contributions from box and crossed-box diagrams, the ratio $\mu_pG_E/G_M$ extracted from the recent precise unpolarized and polarized experimental data can be described consistently.