Quantcast
Loading [MathJax]/jax/output/HTML-CSS/jax.js
  • Register
PhysicsOverflow is a next-generation academic platform for physicists and astronomers, including a community peer review system and a postgraduate-level discussion forum analogous to MathOverflow.
W3Counter Web Stats

Welcome to PhysicsOverflow! PhysicsOverflow is an open platform for community peer review and graduate-level Physics discussion.

Please help promote PhysicsOverflow ads elsewhere if you like it.

News

PO is now at the Physics Department of Bielefeld University!

New printer friendly PO pages!

Migration to Bielefeld University was successful!

Please vote for this year's PhysicsOverflow ads!

Please do help out in categorising submissions. Submit a paper to PhysicsOverflow!

... see more

Tools for paper authors

Submit paper
Claim Paper Authorship

Tools for SE users

Search User
Reclaim SE Account
Request Account Merger
Nativise imported posts
Claim post (deleted users)
Import SE post

Users whose questions have been imported from Physics Stack Exchange, Theoretical Physics Stack Exchange, or any other Stack Exchange site are kindly requested to reclaim their account and not to register as a new user.

Public β tools

Report a bug with a feature
Request a new functionality
404 page design
Send feedback

Attributions

(propose a free ad)

Site Statistics

208 submissions , 166 unreviewed
5,138 questions , 2,258 unanswered
5,415 answers , 23,101 comments
1,470 users with positive rep
823 active unimported users
More ...

  Question on lamb-shift calculation in Weinberg QFT

+ 1 like - 0 dislike
1151 views

In short, how to reproduce the derivation in the footnote on page 588 of Weinberg's QFT book? The derivation there are necessary for lamb-shift calculation.

Complete version of my question:

Weinberg's QFT book describes how to calculate lamb shift of the hydrogen atom in chapter 14. During the course of calculation, there are spurious shift terms that persist in the limit of zero coulomb-field strength. These spurious zeroth-order shift terms should cancel among themselves.  (Page 588, "By the same argument we can anticipate ... cancels the second and third terms ..., as well as the footnote on this page.)

The book described the justification of this cancellation, during which he employed the following intermediate result (hereafter referred to as result A):
M|˜Γ0MN(k)|2=(k2+m2eme2k2+m2e)
 (page 588 footnote.) I tried to reproduce this result following Weinberg's description but failed so far. Actually, it seems that, if an incorrect approximation is used, one get exactly the above result A.

My attemped derivation is as follows:
The derivation starts from
˜ΓρMN(k)d3yeikyˉvM(y)γρuN(y)
where vM, uN are four-component electronic and positronic "wave functions" defined in chapter 5. They are just solutions of the Dirac equation for hydrogen. According to the description of Weinberg, a relativistic approximation for the positronic wave function is used, vp,σ(x)=1(2π)3/2v(p,σ)eipx, where v(p,σ) is positron spinor introduced in section 5.5 of the book. It satisfy σv(p,σ)v(p,σ)=12p0[ipμγμme]β where p0=p2+m2e.


Note that to maintain a consistent notation of vp,σ between chapter 5 and chapter 14, vp,σ(x) 's x dependence has been changed to eipx instead of eipx as given in footnote of page 588. This change is not obligatory but convenient. For uN one use the extreme nonrelativistic approximation βuN(x)=uN(x) (page 588, footnote).

Using the above formulas one get 

M|˜Γ0MN(k)|2=˜uN(kp)p2+m2eme2p2+m2e˜uN(kp),
where
˜uN(q)d3y1(2π)3/2eikyuN(y).


If one can treat ˜u(q)˜u(q)  as a delta function δ3(q), one get immediately result A.

If the typical momentum inside a hydrogen atom is much smaller than the |k| values, this delta-function approximation can be justified. In a Coulomb field this criteria amounts to
Zαme|k|.


However it turns out the opposite is true: the intermediate result A is used to get the left-hand side of the following result:
e22(2π)3d3k(1k21k2+μ2)(k2+m2eme2k2+m2e)αμ2πme
(page 588 footnote). As can be seen, the significant values of |k| are those that are smaller than μ. i.e. ,    |k|<μ.

However, in the first paragraph of page 579, it says μ is "chosen to be much larger than typical electron kinetic energies, but much less than typical electron momenta. " And the imediately following equation (14.3.1) states unambiguously that:
(Zα)2meμZαme.

Thus |k|<μZαme, which is contradictory to the above mentioned justification criteria for the delta function approximation Zαme|k|.

So, how do one understand this? Is Weinberg correct here? If so, how? And if not, how do one eventually justify the cancelation of the spurious zeroth-order shifts, which is of course physically required?

asked Jun 30, 2021 in Theoretical Physics by zxontt (5 points) [ revision history ]

Your answer

Please use answers only to (at least partly) answer questions. To comment, discuss, or ask for clarification, leave a comment instead.
To mask links under text, please type your text, highlight it, and click the "link" button. You can then enter your link URL.
Please consult the FAQ for as to how to format your post.
This is the answer box; if you want to write a comment instead, please use the 'add comment' button.
Live preview (may slow down editor)   Preview
Your name to display (optional):
Anti-spam verification:
If you are a human please identify the position of the character covered by the symbol in the following word:
pysicsOerflow
Then drag the red bullet below over the corresponding character of our banner. When you drop it there, the bullet changes to green (on slow internet connections after a few seconds).
Please complete the anti-spam verification




user contributions licensed under cc by-sa 3.0 with attribution required

Your rights
...