LAMB SHIFT SELF-ENERGY AS A FULLING-DAVIES-UNRUH EFFECT
NABIL M. LAWANDY *
Department of Physics, School of Engineering, Brown University, Providence, RI 02903, USA
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
The self-energy contribution to the Lamb Shift in hydrogen is expressed as a Fulling-Davies-Unruh (FDU) thermal kinetic energy where the bound electron is an Unruh-DeWitt point detector. The result for the 1S state of hydrogen is accurate to within 10-3 of the value obtained from the lowest order one loop self-energy contribution to the Lamb Shift, and suggests that it may be possible to interpret QED calculations as thermally equilibrated systems in an accelerated reference frame coupled to a Minkowski vacuum.
Keywords: Quantum Electrodynamics or (QED), spectroscopy, atomic physics, radiative shifts, non-inertial reference frame