Screened Lamb shift calculations for lithiumlike uranium, sodiumlike platinum, and copperlike gold

Abstract

Calculations of the screened electron self-energy are carried out in local central potentials that approximate a Hartree-Fock potential. The resulting energy corrections are combined with screened vacuum-polarization calculations and used to predict the Lamb shift for n=2 states of lithiumlike uranium, n=3 states of sodiumlike platinum, and n=4 states of copperlike gold. The theoretical values of the screened Lamb shift are found to be in good agreement with values inferred from experiments.