Trace anomaly contribution to hydrogen atom mass

TL;DR

This paper calculates how the trace anomaly affects the mass of the hydrogen atom, linking it to the Lamb shift, and discusses implications for understanding the mass of QCD bound states like protons.

Contribution

It introduces a novel calculation of trace anomaly contribution to atomic mass and connects it to the Lamb shift, offering insights into QCD bound state masses.

Findings

Trace anomaly contributes to hydrogen atom mass.

Relation between trace anomaly and Lamb shift established.

Implications for proton mass structure discussed.

Abstract

We compute trace anomaly contribution to hydrogen atom mass, which turns out to be related to the part of the Lamb shift. This finding might shed new light on our understandings of the mass structure of QCD bound states, such as, proton.