I was watching a video explaining virtual particle can be drawn to the positively charged necleus which explain why there is a tiny step between the higher energy level and ground state, but I'm not convinced as to why it doesn't affect all other energy levels?
$\begingroup$
$\endgroup$
4
-
1$\begingroup$ The Lamb shift does affect other orbitals - it just does so at higher orders of perturbation theory. There are more details at Why is the energy of $2s_{1/2}$ greater than the energy of $2p_{1/2}$ after the Lamb shift is taken into account?. $\endgroup$– Emilio PisantyJan 4, 2019 at 17:12
-
$\begingroup$ "lambshift" ... ? $\endgroup$– my2ctsJan 4, 2019 at 17:30
-
$\begingroup$ @my2cts Yes that is a typo, but I'm sure you know what they mean. $\endgroup$– BioPhysicistJan 4, 2019 at 20:52
-
$\begingroup$ @Aaron Steven For a brief moment I believed that they mistake "Willis Eugene Lamb Jr. (July 12, 1913 – May 15, 2008) [ ] an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1955 "for his discoveries concerning the fine structure of the hydrogen spectrum.", for livestock. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_Lamb $\endgroup$– my2ctsJan 4, 2019 at 21:08
Add a comment
|
1 Answer
$\begingroup$
$\endgroup$
The Lamb Shift will certainly contain contributions from all energy levels in an atomic system (including the non-bound ones), but basic perturbation theory will tell you that the contribution from higher energy levels will be negligible compared to the next-highest-level contribution (which is already quite small).
answered Jan 4, 2019 at 15:48