Nuclear polarization study: New frontiers for tests of QED in heavy highly charged ions

TL;DR

This paper investigates nuclear-polarization effects in heavy ions, showing how their corrections can be canceled to improve tests of quantum electrodynamics and determine fundamental constants.

Contribution

It provides a systematic evaluation of nuclear-polarization corrections in heavy ions and demonstrates their potential cancellation with nuclear corrections for enhanced QED testing.

Findings

Nuclear-polarization effects can be substantially canceled with nuclear corrections.

Cancellation enables more precise tests of QED in strong fields.

The study offers new methods for probing fundamental constants.

Abstract

A systematic investigation of the nuclear-polarization effects in one- and few-electron heavy ions is presented. The nuclear-polarization corrections in the zeroth and first orders in $1/Z$ are evaluated to the binding energies, the hyperfine splitting, and the bound-electron g factor. It is shown, that the nuclear-polarization contributions can be substantially canceled simultaneously with the rigid nuclear corrections. This allows for new prospects for probing the QED effects in strong electromagnetic field and the determination of fundamental constants.