English

Derivation of the Lamb Shift using an Effective Field Theory

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2016-09-06 v1

Abstract

We rederive the O(α5)O(\alpha^5) shift of the hydrogen levels in the non-recoil (me/mP0m_e/m_P \to 0) limit using Nonrelativistic QED (NRQED), an effective field theory developed by Caswell and Lepage (Phys. Lett. 167B, 437 (1986)). Our result contains the Lamb shift as a special case. Our calculation is far simpler than traditional approaches and has the advantage of being systematic. It also clearly illustrates the need to renormalize (or ``match'') the coefficients of the effective theory beyond tree level.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-ph/9611313,
  title  = {Derivation of the Lamb Shift using an Effective Field Theory},
  author = {Patrick Labelle and S. Mohammad Zebarjad},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-ph/9611313},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

15 pages, 11 Postscript figures, uses Latex2e and epsf.tex