A precise measurement of the cross section of the process $e^+e^-\to\pi^+\pi^-(\gamma)$ from threshold to an energy of 3GeV is obtained with the initial-state radiation (ISR) method using 232fb$^{-1}$ of data collected with the BaBar detector at $e^+e^-$ center-of-mass energies near 10.6GeV. The ISR luminosity is determined from a study of the leptonic process $e^+e^-\to\mu^+\mu^-(\gamma)\gamma_{\rm ISR}$, which is found to agree with the next-to-leading-order QED prediction to within 1.1%. The cross section for the process $e^+e^-\to\pi^+\pi^-(\gamma)$ is obtained with a systematic uncertainty of 0.5% in the dominant $\rho$ resonance region. The leading-order hadronic contribution to the muon magnetic anomaly calculated using the measured $\pi\pi$ cross section from threshold to 1.8GeV is $(514.1 \pm 2.2({\rm stat}) \pm 3.1({\rm syst}))\times 10^{-10}$.
Bare cross-section $e^+e^-\rightarrow\pi^+\pi^-(\gamma)$ The cross section values (nb) for 337 CM energy intervals (GeV) from 0.3 to 3 GeV. The cross section is bare (excluding vacuum polarization) and includes the emission of final state photons. ***WARNING*** The quoted errors are from the diagonal elements of the statistical covariance matrix (reported on the Table titled "Bare cross-section statistical covariance") and added quadratically with the systematic uncertainties (reported in the Table titled "Bare cross-section systematic uncertainties"). These errors can be used when plotting the results as they are representative of the precision achieved. However, any calculation involving the cross section over some energy range MUST use, to be meaningful, the full statistical covariance matrix and the proper correlations of the systematic uncertainties. ***WARNING*** The Bare cross-section statistical covariance is reported as additional resource in YAML, since its size exceeds the maximum size of 10 MB for the library hepdata_lib. It is a statistical covariance matrix, for 337x337 CM energy intervals (GeV), from 0.3 to 3 GeV, matching the ones of this table.
Bare cross-section $e^+e^-\rightarrow\pi^+\pi^-(\gamma)$ systematic uncertainties contributions and total systematic uncertainties, for 337 CM energy intervals (GeV), from 0.3 to 3 GeV. All systematics contributions are each 100% correlated in all energy bins.
Bare cross-section $e^+e^-\rightarrow\pi^+\pi^-(\gamma)$ statistical covariance matrix, for 337x337 CM energy intervals (GeV), from 0.3 to 3 GeV.