English

Higher-order recoil corrections for singlet states of the helium atom

Atomic Physics 2017-01-31 v2

Abstract

We investigate the finite nuclear mass corrections in the helium atom in order to resolve a significant disagreement between the 23S23P2^3S - 2^3P and 23S21S2^3S - 2^1S transition isotope shifts. These two transitions lead to discrepant results for the nuclear charge radii difference between 4^4He and 3^3He. The accurate treatment of the finite nuclear mass effects is quite complicated and requires the use of the quantum field theoretical approach. We derive α6m2/M\alpha^6 m^2/M correction with the help of nonrelativistic QED and dimensional regularization of the three body Coulombic system, and present accurate numerical results for low lying states. The previously reported 4σ4 \sigma discrepancy in the nuclear charge radius difference between 3^3He and 4^4He from two different atomic isotope shift transitions is confirmed, which calls for verification of experimental transition frequencies.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1612.06142,
  title  = {Higher-order recoil corrections for singlet states of the helium atom},
  author = {V. Patkos and V. A. Yerokhin and K. Pachucki},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1612.06142},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

29 pages. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1610.04060