# QED radiative corrections to the $^2$P$_{1/2}$-$^2$P$_{3/2}$ fine-structure in fluorinelike ions

## TL;DR

This paper presents precise, nonperturbative QED calculations of fine-structure energy corrections in fluorinelike ions, resolving previous discrepancies between theory and experiment and highlighting significant differences from approximate methods.

## Contribution

It provides the first nonperturbative ab initio QED calculations of fine-structure in F-like ions, including all relevant effects, improving accuracy over prior approximate methods.

## Key findings

- Discrepancies with approximate QED calculations are significant, especially for uranium.
- The new calculations resolve previous theory-experiment discrepancies when combined with existing fine-structure data.
- Self-energy contributions can differ in sign from earlier estimates, notably in heavy ions.

## Abstract

Ab initio calculations of QED radiative corrections to the $^2P_{1/2}$ - $^2P_{3/2}$ fine-structure transition energy are performed for selected F-like ions. These calculations are nonperturbative in $\alpha Z$ and include all first-order and many-electron second-order effects in $\alpha$. When compared to approximate QED computations, a notable discrepancy is found especially for F-like uranium for which the predicted self-energy contributions even differ in sign. Moreover, all deviations between theory and experiment for the $^2P_{1/2}$ - $^2P_{3/2}$ fine-structure energies of F-like ions, reported recently by Li et al., Phys. Rev. A 98, 020502(R) (2018), are resolved if their highly accurate, non-QED fine-structure values are combined with the QED corrections ab initially evaluated here.