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Minimal Length Uncertainty Relation and the Hydrogen Spectrum

Modifications of Heisenberg's uncertainty relations have been proposed in the literature which imply a minimum position uncertainty. We study the low energy effects of the new physics responsible for this by examining the consequent change in the quantum mechanical commutation relations involving position and momenta. In particular, the modifications to the spectrum of the hydrogen atom can be naturally interpreted as a varying (with energy) fine structure constant. From the data on the energy levels we attempt to constrain the scale of the new physics and find that it must be close to or larger than the weak scale. Experiments in the near future are expected to change this bound by at least an additional order of magnitude.