The influence of nuclear structure on the Lamb shift in hydrogenlike heavy atoms

Abstract

We evaluate and list the various contributions to the Lamb shift in hydrogenlike heavy atoms which arise from parameters describing shape, size and structure of the nucleus. We compare these contributions with those obtained from quantum electrodynamics. It is found that in heavy nuclei, nuclear contributions depending on experimental parameters and nuclear models are of the same size as QED contributions of order a2. Therefore, in these systems the theoretical predictions for binding energies are limited by the exact knowledge of the nuclear parameters.