Nuclear Corrections to Hyperfine Structure in Light Hydrogenic Atoms

Abstract

Hyperfine intervals in light hydrogenic atoms and ions are among the most accurately measured quantities in physics. The theory of QED corrections has recently advanced to the point that uncalculated terms for hydrogenic atoms and ions are probably smaller than 0.1 parts per million (ppm), and the experiments are even more accurate. The difference of the experiments and QED theory is interpreted as the effect on the hyperfine interaction of the (finite) nuclear charge and magnetization distributions, and this difference varies from tens to hundreds of ppm. We have calculated the dominant component of the 1s hyperfine interval for deuterium, tritium and singly ionized helium, using modern second-generation potentials to compute the nuclear component of the hyperfine splitting for the deuteron and the trinucleon systems. The calculated nuclear corrections are within 3% of the experimental values for deuterium and tritium, but are about 20% discrepant for singly ionized helium. The nuclear corrections for the trinucleon systems can be qualitatively understood by invoking SU(4) symmetry.