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Springer Handbook of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics pp 413–428Cite as

Quantum Electrodynamics

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Part of the book series: Springer Handbooks ((SHB))

Abstract

Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) is the underlying theory of atomic and molecular physics. Despite this generality, it is not necessary to use the full theory in most atomic physics problems. This is because in the nonrelativistic limit QED reduces to the Schrödinger equation, and the extra physics in QED is in general quite small, being suppressed by powers of the fine structure constant α. Given the difficulty of solving the Schrödinger equation with high accuracy in most atomic physics situations, these small corrections can usually be neglected. The theory is however needed to explain small deviations from the solution to the Schrödinger equation in simple systems, in particular a single electron in a constant magnetic field and few-electron atoms. Larger deviations occur for highly charged ions, and also for high-energy scattering of electrons and photons. We note that a rather extensive review of QED is available [27.1], and refer the reader interested in more details to that work. In addition, comparison with experiment is made by Mohr in Chapt. 28, and thus is done here only in selected cases.

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Abbreviations

MBPT:

many-body perturbation theory

NRQED:

NR quantum electrodynamics

QED:

quantum electrodynamics

RMI:

relativistic mass increase

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame, 319 Nieuwland Science, 46556, Notre Dame, IN, USA

    Jonathan Sapirstein

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  1. Jonathan Sapirstein
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Correspondence to Jonathan Sapirstein .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Windsor, 401 Sunset St., N9B 3P4, Windsor, ON, Canada

    Gordon Drake Prof.

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Sapirstein, J. (2006). Quantum Electrodynamics. In: Drake, G. (eds) Springer Handbook of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics. Springer Handbooks. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-26308-3_27

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