Proton Polarization Shifts in Electronic and Muonic Hydrogen

Abstract

The contribution of virtual excitations to the energy levels of electronic and muonic hydrogen is investigated combining a model-independent approach for the main part with quark model predictions for the remaining corrections. Precise values for the polarization shifts are obtained in the long-wavelength dipole approximation by numerically integrating over measured total photoabsorption cross sections. These unretarded results are considerably reduced by including retardation effects in an approximate way since the average momentum transfer (together with the mean excitation energy) turns out to be larger than usually assumed. Transverse and seagull contributions are estimated in a simple harmonic oscillator quark model and found to be non-negligible. Possible uncertainties and improvements of the final results are discussed.

8 pages, LATEX, no figures, discussion improved and references updated, final version accepted for publication in Phys. Lett. B

References in corpus (5)

• Multipole analysis of pion photoproduction based on fixed t dispersion relations and unitarity
• A new evaluation of the Baldin sum rule
• Sixth-Order Vacuum-Polarization Contribution to the Lamb Shift of the Muonic Hydrogen
• Higher-Order Nuclear-Polarizability Corrections in Atomic Hydrogen
• Nucleon Polarizability Contribution to the Hydrogen Lamb Shift and Hydrogen -- Deuterium Isotope Shift

Cited by in corpus (12)

• Theory of Light Hydrogenlike Atoms
• Lamb Shift in Light Muonic Atoms - Revisited
• Lamb Shift in Muonic Hydrogen. I. Verification and Update of Theoretical Predictions
• Lamb Shift in Muonic Hydrogen
• Forward virtual Compton scattering and the Lamb shift in chiral perturbation theory
• Lamb Shift in Muonic Hydrogen. II. Analysis of the Discrepancy of Theory and Experiment
• Non-perturbative evaluation of some QED contributions to the muonic hydrogen $\mathbf{n}=2$ Lamb shift and hyperfine structure
• Proton polarizability effect in the Lamb shift of the hydrogen atom
• Two-photon exchange correction to the Lamb shift and hyperfine splitting of S levels
• The chiral structure of the Lamb shift and the definition of the proton radius
• The proton radius (puzzle?) and its relatives
• Comment on ``Proton Polarization Shifts in Electronic and Muonic Hydrogen''