Construct · 1 fields · 3 citations

Lamb shift: a standalone construct

One name. One construct. A landmark on the map.

● anchor · a standalone construct Nearest construct by meaningAharonov-Bohm effectcompare the meanings
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Lamb shift1 CONSTRUCTLamb shiftLAMB · 2S-2P SHIFT

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Atomic physics / QED

The small energy gap between the hydrogen 2S1/2 and 2P1/2 levels

Willis Lamb and Robert Retherford reported in 1947, using a microwave beam method on hydrogen atoms, that the 2S1/2 and 2P1/2 levels of the hydrogen atom are not exactly equal in energy as the simple Dirac theory of the electron had predicted, but are separated by a small gap now called the Lamb shift, about 1058 megahertz in frequency units. Hans Bethe supplied the first theoretical account the same year, attributing the gap to the electron's interaction with the fluctuating quantum vacuum, the electromagnetic field's zero-point activity, an effect that ordinary Dirac theory leaves out. Explaining this measurement was a founding test of quantum electrodynamics (QED), the quantum theory of light and charged particles, and it drove the development of renormalization, the systematic handling of otherwise infinite quantities in the calculation. What makes the Lamb shift a landmark is that it is a precisely measured and precisely calculable quantity in which experiment and QED agree to many digits, so it serves as one of the sharpest quantitative tests of the theory and as a probe of the properties of the vacuum.[1][2][3]

Unit
A fixed energy (or equivalent frequency) difference between two atomic energy levels, expressed in electronvolts or megahertz
Recovery means
Not applicable
Measured by
Determined by radio-frequency and optical spectroscopy of hydrogen and hydrogen-like atoms, comparing the measured resonance frequency between the levels against the QED prediction

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Nearby constructs

beam1 fields · 2 citationsanchor · a standalone constructdevelopment1 fields · 2 citationsanchor · a standalone constructenergy5 fields · 10 citationsjingle · one word, five constructs

References

  1. Lamb, W. E., & Retherford, R. C. (1947). Fine structure of the hydrogen atom by a microwave method. Physical Review, 72(3), 241-243. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.72.241
  2. Bethe, H. A. (1947). The electromagnetic shift of energy levels. Physical Review, 72(4), 339-341. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.72.339
  3. Eides, M. I., Grotch, H., & Shelyuto, V. A. (2001). Theory of light hydrogenlike atoms. Physics Reports, 342(2-3), 63-261. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0370-1573(00)00077-6

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