| EPSRC Reference: |
GR/L78857/01 |
| Title: |
EXPERIMENT TO INVESTIGATE AN APPARENT FAILURE OF QED IN HE+ |
| Principal Investigator: |
Boshier, Dr M G |
| Other Investigators: |
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| Researcher Co-Investigators: |
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| Project Partners: |
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| Department: |
Physics and Astronomy |
| Organisation: |
University of Sussex |
| Scheme: |
Standard Research (Pre-FEC) |
| Starts: |
01 April 1998 |
Ends: |
31 December 2001 |
Value (£): |
227,577
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| EPSRC Research Topic Classifications: |
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| EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications: |
| No relevance to Underpinning Sectors |
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Summary on Grant Application Form |
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At present, the measured Lamb shift of He+(2S) disagrees with the theory by nine standard deviations, indicating a serious problem either with high-order corrections to QED theory of with the experimental data. We will measure this Lamb shift by two-photon laser excitation to resolve the issue. If our measurements demonstrates that the theory of quantum electrodynamics is incomplete, this would of course be an extremely important discovery. If the QED theory turns out to be correct, a comparison of the He+ measurement with recent measurements of the H(1S) Lamb shift (including our own) can be used to obtain a new value for the charge radius of the proton. This will provide a significant test of lattice QCD calculations.
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Key Findings |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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Potential use in non-academic contexts |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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Impacts |
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| Description |
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk |
| Summary |
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| Date Materialised |
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Sectors submitted by the Researcher |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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| Project URL: |
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| Further Information: |
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| Organisation Website: |
http://www.sussex.ac.uk |