The Lamb Shift: A Mechanistic Explanation

This document presents a mechanistic explanation for the Lamb shift, reframing it as a real physical process rather than an abstract quantum electrodynamic (QED) effect. It describes how a photon transfers momentum to an electron, exciting it from the 1S to 2S state. Instead of being fully absorbed, the photon undergoes temporary confinement within the electron’s internal structure (hypothetically modeled as a 12-vertex gluon framework). This confinement leads to internal ricocheting, slightly modifying the electron’s energy before the photon escapes. This sequence—momentum transfer, temporary confinement, and photon escape—accounts for the small energy shift between 2S and 2P, eliminating the need for virtual particles or vacuum fluctuations. The document also provides timescales for each step and a simplified energy relation for the Lamb shift mechanism.