Analysis of the electron self-energy for tightly bound electrons

Abstract

A general scheme for mass renormalization of the electron self-energy in strong nuclear fields is developed. In second order the results agree with those recently obtained by Labzowsky and Mitrushenkov [Phys. Rev. A 53, 3029 (1996)], and, in particular, it is shown that the extra counterterm observed by these authors appears quite naturally in the more general scheme developed here.