Nuclear magnetic shielding in heliumlike ions

Abstract

Ab initio QED calculations of the nuclear magnetic shielding constant in helium-like ions are presented. We combine the nonrelativistic QED approach based on an expansion in powers of the fine-structure constant $\alpha$ and the so-called ``all-order'' QED approach which includes all orders in the parameter $Z\alpha$ but uses a perturbation expansion in the parameter $1/Z$ (where $Z$ is the nuclear charge number). The combination of the two complementary methods makes our treatment applicable both to low-$Z$ and high-$Z$ ions. Our calculations confirm the presence of a rare antiscreening effect for the relativistic shielding correction and demonstrate the importance of the inclusion of the negative-energy part of the Dirac spectrum.