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Reexamining Blackbody Shifts For Hydrogenlike Ions, Ulrich D. Jentschura, Martin K. Haas

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

We investigate blackbody-induced energy shifts for low-lying levels of atomic systems, with a special emphasis on transitions used in current and planned high-precision experiments on atomic hydrogen and ionized helium. Fine-structure- and Lamb-shift-induced blackbody shifts are found to increase with the square of the nuclear charge number, whereas blackbody shifts due to virtual transitions decrease with increasing nuclear charge as the fourth power of the nuclear charge. We also investigate the decay width acquired by the ground state of atomic hydrogen, due to interaction with blackbody photons. The corresponding width is due to an instability against excitation to higher excited …