QED radiative corrections to the P1/22−P3/22 fine structure in fluorinelike ions

Ab initio calculations of QED radiative corrections to the ${}^{2}P_{1/2}\text{−}{}^{2}P_{3/2}$ fine-structure transition energy are performed for selected F-like ions. These calculations are nonperturbative in $\alpha Z$ and include all first-order and many-electron second-order effects in $\alpha$. When compared to approximate QED computations, a notable discrepancy is found especially for F-like uranium for which the predicted self-energy contributions even differ in sign. Moreover, all deviations between theory and experiment for the ${}^{2}P_{1/2}\text{−}{}^{2}P_{3/2}$ fine-structure energies of F-like ions, reported recently by [Li et al., Phys. Rev. A 98, 020502(R) (2018)], are resolved if their highly accurate, non-QED fine-structure values are combined with the QED corrections ab initially evaluated here.