Nrqed in Bound States: Applying Renormalization to an Effective Field Theory

TL;DR

This paper introduces NRQED, an effective field theory simplifying the analysis of nonrelativistic bound states in QED, demonstrating how renormalization techniques improve precision and offering insights into potential new physics.

Contribution

It provides a pedagogical explanation and explicit calculations of NRQED, illustrating its utility in bound state problems and its relation to QED and beyond.

Findings

NRQED simplifies calculations for nonrelativistic bound states.

Explicit renormalization procedures improve precision in NRQED.

Discussion of implications for physics beyond QED.

Abstract

This is a pedagogical introduction to NRQED, a low enery approximation of QED which can be made to reproduce QED to an arbitrary precision. It is especially useful when applied to nonrelativistic bound states. We start by explaining why QED is so difficult to apply to nr bound states, why NRQED makes it much simpler and then proceed to do an explicit calculation. We also briefly discuss what this can teach us about ``new'' physics beyond QED. This is based on a talk given at the XIV MRST meeting in Toronto.