Weak-interaction effects in heavy atomic systems. II

Abstract

Evaluations of parity-violating and charge-parity–violating effects in heavy one-valence-electron atoms, employing the Hartree-Fock potential and several model potentials, are extended to include first-order electron-electron Coulomb corrections using many-body perturbation theory. Parity-conserving quantities, including valence energies, hyperfine splittings, and oscillator strengths, are also calculated and compared with experiment to determine the reliability of the weak-interaction calculations. It is found that the spread between calculations carried out in first-order perturbation theory starting from different potentials is of the same order of magnitude as the spread between the corresponding lowest-order evaluations. It is concluded that second-order many-body perturbation theory must give significant contributions. Some technical problems associated with going to second order are discussed.