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In physics, the Lamb shift, named after Willis Lamb, is an anomalous difference in energy between two electron orbitals in a hydrogen atom. The difference was not predicted by theory and it cannot be derived from the Dirac equation , which predicts identical energies.
Willis Eugene Lamb Jr. (/ l æ m /; July 12, 1913 – May 15, 2008) was an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1955 "for his discoveries concerning the fine structure of the hydrogen spectrum."
Robert Curtis Retherford (1912–1981) was an American physicist.He was a graduate student of Willis Lamb at Columbia Radiation Laboratory.Retherford and Lamb performed the famous experiment (now known as the Lamb–Retherford experiment) revealing Lamb shift in the fine structure of hydrogen, a decisive experimental step toward a new understanding of quantum electrodynamics.
Willis Lamb had found when probing hydrogen atoms with microwave beams that one of the two possible quantum states had slightly more energy than predicted by the Dirac theory; this became known as the Lamb shift. Lamb had discovered the shift a few weeks before (with Robert Retherford), so this was a
Relativistic Doppler shift: 1942 Chicago Pile-1: Enrico Fermi: Demonstration First self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction: 1945 Trinity: Manhattan Project: Demonstration First nuclear weapon detonation 1947 Lamb–Retherford experiment: Willis Lamb and Robert Retherford: Discovery Lamb shift/Vacuum energy: 1956 Wu experiment: Chien-Shiung Wu ...
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In 1947, Willis Lamb and Robert Retherford measured the minute difference in the 2 S 1/2 and 2 P 1/2 energy levels of the hydrogen atom, also called the Lamb shift. By ignoring the contribution of photons whose energy exceeds the electron mass, Hans Bethe successfully estimated the numerical value of the Lamb shift.
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