Nuclear recoil effect in the Lamb shift of light hydrogen-like atoms

TL;DR

This paper presents high-precision calculations of the nuclear recoil effect on the Lamb shift in hydrogen-like atoms, resolving discrepancies between different theoretical approaches and reducing uncertainties in hydrogen spectral predictions.

Contribution

It provides the first all-order in $Z\alpha$ calculation of the recoil effect, clarifying higher-order contributions and resolving previous theoretical disagreements.

Findings

Excellent agreement with $Z\alpha$ expansion terms.

Higher-order remainder in hydrogen is larger than expected.

Significantly reduces theoretical uncertainty in hydrogen Lamb shift.

Abstract

We report high-precision calculations of the nuclear recoil effect to the Lamb shift of hydrogen-like atoms to the first order in the electron-nucleus mass ratio and to all orders in the nuclear binding strength parameter $Z\alpha$. The results are in excellent agreement with the known terms of the $Z\alpha$ expansion and allow an accurate identification of the nonperturbative higher-order remainder. For hydrogen, the higher-order remainder was found to be much larger than anticipated. This result resolves the long-standing disagreement between the numerical all-order and the analytical $Z\alpha$-expansion approaches to the recoil effect and completely removes the second-largest theoretical uncertainty in the hydrogen Lamb shift of the $1S$ and $2S$ states.