Abstract

We investigate the guage invariance of the leading logarithmic radiative correction to the two-photon decay width in hydrogenlike atoms, was investigated. The effective treatment of the correction using a Lamb-shift led to the equivalent results in both the length and velocity gages. The relevant radiative corrections were found to be related to the energies that entered into the propagator denominators, to the Hamiltonian, to the wave functions, and to the energy conservation condition, that holds between two photons. The results show that the dominant radiative correction to the 2S two-photon decay width is about -2.020 536(α/π)(Zα)2 1n[(Zα)-2] in units of the nonrelativistic expressions. This result is in agreement with a length-gauge calculation [S. G. Karshenboim and V. G. Ivanov, e-print physics/9702027], where the coefficient was given as −2.025(1).

Department(s)

Physics

Keywords and Phrases

Computational Methods; Electrodynamics; Electron Energy Levels; Green's Function; Hamiltonians; Hydrogen; Integration; Lagrange Multipliers; Mathematical Operators; Matrix Algebra; Numerical Analysis; Perturbation Techniques; Photons; Problem Solving; Quantum Theory; Photon Energies; Photon Spectroscopy; Quantum Electrodynamics (QED); Radiative Corrections; Atomic Physics

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

1050-2947

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Final Version

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2004 American Physical Society (APS), All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 May 2004

Download

Full Text Link

Included in

Physics Commons

Share

 
COinS