Ab initio QED calculations in diatomic quasimolecules

Abstract

We present a theoretical approach for ab initio calculations of the one-loop QED corrections to energy levels of heavy diatomic quasimolecules. This approach is based on the partial-wave expansion of the molecular wave and Green's functions in the basis of monopole solutions, written in spherical coordinates. By using so-generated molecular functions, we employ the existing atomic-physics techniques to evaluate the self-energy and vacuum-polarization corrections. In order to illustrate the application of our method, we perform detailed calculations of the Dirac energy and QED corrections for the 1${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{g}$ ground state of homonuclear ${\mathrm{U}}_{2}{}^{183+}$ and heteronuclear U-${\mathrm{Pb}}^{173+}$ and Bi-${\mathrm{Au}}^{161+}$ quasimolecules.