QED radiative corrections to electric dipole amplitudes in heavy atoms

We use the radiative potential method to perform a detailed study of quantum electrodynamics (QED) radiative corrections to electric dipole (E1) transition amplitudes in heavy alkali-metal atoms Rb, Cs, Fr, and alkali-metal-like ions ${\mathrm{Sr}}^{+}$, ${\mathrm{Ba}}^{+}$, and ${\mathrm{Ra}}^{+}$. The validity of the method is checked by comparing with the results of rigorous QED in simple atomic potentials. We study the effects of core relaxation, polarization of the core by the E1 field, and valence-core correlations on QED, which are shown to be important in some cases. We identify several transitions for which the QED contribution exceeds the deviation between atomic theory and experiment.

Figure 1

Feynman diagrams for QED corrections to E1 amplitudes. Top row: self-energy corrections; bottom row: vacuum polarization corrections. Wavy lines with triangles represent the E1 field, wavy lines the photon propagator, and double line the bound electron wave function and propagator. Diagrams on the right correspond to vertex corrections.