Pure recoil corrections to the Lamb shift in hydrogenic atoms.

Abstract

The recoil corrections of order (Z\ensuremath{\alpha}${)}^{6}$${\mathit{m}}^{2}$/M to the hydrogenic Lamb shift are reviewed, and additional terms previously thought to be small are calculated numerically. It is found that significant contributions arise from single-transverse--single-Coulomb interactions in which the bulk of the contribution comes from negative-energy electron intermediate states. This term is found to contain a lnZ\ensuremath{\alpha} dependence, which accounts for its large effect. Other smaller terms are also computed and combined with all previous Lamb-shift contributions. The current status of the Lamb shift in hydrogen is reviewed.