Dispersive evaluation of the Lamb shift in muonic deuterium from chiral effective field theory

TL;DR

This paper combines dispersive relations and ab initio calculations within chiral effective field theory to improve the accuracy of nuclear structure corrections for the Lamb shift in muonic deuterium, potentially enhancing precision in atomic spectroscopy.

Contribution

It introduces a hybrid method merging dispersive relations with ab initio calculations to better estimate nuclear effects in muonic atoms, validated against electromagnetic data.

Findings

Improved accuracy in nuclear structure corrections compared to previous methods.

Validation of chiral effective field theory with electromagnetic data.

Potential application to other light muonic atoms.

Abstract

We merge the dispersive relation approach and the ab initio method to compute nuclear structure corrections to the Lamb shift in muonic deuterium. We calculate the deuteron response functions and corresponding uncertainties up to next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order in chiral effective field theory and compare our results to selected electromagnetic data to test the validity of the theory. We then feed response functions calculated over a wide range of kinematics to the dispersion-theory formalism and show that an improved accuracy is obtained compared to that with the use of available experimental data in the dispersive analysis. This opens up the possibility of applying this hybrid method to other light muonic atoms and supplementing experimental data with ab initio theory for kinematics where data are scarce or difficult to measure with the goal of reducing uncertainties in estimates of nuclear structure effects in atomic spectroscopy.