Effect of Self-Interaction on Feynman's Interpretation of the Lamb Shift

Abstract

We derive Bethe's formula for the Lamb shift by extending Feynman's suggestion that the shift could be interpreted as the change, due to the presence of the atom, in electromagnetic field energy. This approach is based on measurable quantities such as a refractive index but has a contribution from virtual photon absorption which is effectively eliminated by a high-energy cutoff in the nonrelativistic theory. We show that this unphysical contribution is cancelled when a self-interaction energy is included in Feynman's argument.