No abstract

The extremely precise extraction of the proton radius by Pohl et al. from the measured energy difference between the 2P and 2S states of muonic hydrogen disagrees significantly with that extracted from electronic hydrogen or elastic electron-proton scattering. This is the proton radius puzzle. The origins of the puzzle and the reasons for believing it to be very significant are explained. Various possible solutions of the puzzle are identified, and future work needed to resolve the puzzle is discussed.

The dissociation energies from all rovibrational levels of H2 and D2 in the ground electronic state are calculated with high accuracy by including relativistic and quantum electrodynamics (QED) effects in the nonadiabatic treatment of the nuclear motion. For D2, the obtained energies have theoretical uncertainties of 0.001 cm(-1). For H2, similar uncertainties are for the lowest levels, while for the higher ones the uncertainty increases to 0.005 cm(-1). Very good agreement with recent high-resolution measurements of the rotational v = 0 levels of H2, including states with large angular momentum J, is achieved. This agreement would not have been possible without accurate evaluation of the relativistic and QED contributions and may be viewed as the first observation of the QED effects, mainly the electron self-energy, in a molecular spectrum. For several electric quadrupole transitions, we still observe certain disagreement with experimental results, which remains to be explained.

The dissociation energy of molecular hydrogen is determined theoretically with a careful estimation of error bars by including nonadiabatic, relativistic, and quantum electrodynamics (QED) corrections. The relativistic and QED corrections were obtained at the adiabatic level of theory by including all contributions of the order α 2 and α 3 as well as the major (one-loop) α 4 term, where α is the fine structure constant. The computed α 0 , α 2 , α 3 , and α 4 components of the dissociation energy of the H 2 isotopomer are 36118.7978 (2) 2

The proton structure effects, including finite size, polarizability and selfenergy is considered and their influence on energy levels of muonic hydrogen is recalculated. A new theoretical prediction for the Lamb shift is presented together with improved values of all known QED contributions.

The muonic hydrogen experiment measuring the 2P-2S transition energy [R. Pohl et al., Nature (London) 466, 213 (2010)] is significantly discrepant with theoretical predictions based on quantum electrodynamics. A possible approach to resolve this conundrum is to compare experimental values with theoretical predictions in another system, muonic deuterium μD. The only correction which might be questioned in μD is that due to the deuteron polarizability. We investigate this effect in detail and observe cancellation with the elastic contribution. The total value obtained for the deuteron structure correction in the 2P-2S transition is 1.680(16) meV.

Sufficient progress towards redefining the International System of Units (SI) in terms of exact values of fundamental constants has been achieved. Exact values of the Planck constant h, elementary charge e, Boltzmann constant k, and Avogadro constant N A from the CODATA 2017 Special Adjustment of the Fundamental Constants are presented here. These values are recommended to the 26th General Conference on Weights and Measures to form the foundation of the revised SI.

The leading nonadiabatic corrections to rovibrational levels of a diatomic molecule are expressed in terms of three functions of internuclear distance: corrections to the adiabatic potential, the effective nuclear mass, and the effective moment of inertia. The resulting radial Schrödinger equation for nuclear motion is solved numerically yielding accurate nonadiabatic energies for all rovibrational levels of the H 2 molecule. Results for states with J Յ 10 are in excellent agreement with previous calculations by Wolniewicz, and for states with J Ͼ 10 are new.