QED and relativistic corrections in superheavy elements

In this paper we review the different relativistic and QED contributions to energies, ionic radii, transition probabilities and Landé g-factors in super-heavy elements, with the help of the MultiConfiguration Dirac-Fock method (MCDF). The effects of taking into account the Breit interaction to all orders by including it in the self-consistent field process are demonstrated. State of the art radiative corrections are included in the calculation and discussed. We also study the non-relativistic limit of MCDF calculation and find that the non-relativistic offset can be unexpectedly large.

Laboratoire Kastler Brossel is Unité Mixte de Recherche du CNRS nº C8552. This research was partially supported by the FCT projects POCTI/FAT/44279/2002 and POCTI/0303/2003 (Portugal), financed by the European Community Fund FEDER, and by the French-Portuguese collaboration (PESSOA Program, Contract nº 10721NF). One of us (P.I.) thanks M. Sewtz for several discussions on this subject. The 8-processors workstation used for the calculations has been provided by an “infrastructure” grant from the “Ministère de La Recherche et de l’Enseignement Supérieur”.