According to Cornell physicist Toichiro Kinoshita, there is still room for further improvement. Quantum electrodynamics is the basic theory of physics that explains how electrons interact through the electromagnetic force, which is transferred by photons.
Electrons absorb and emit photons during their interactions.
The probability that this will occur is expressed by the value of the fine-structure constant. Updates to the calculation of the fine-structure constant have moved to higher and higher order as experimental techniques in the lab and the speed of the computer have improved. When experimentalists push forward in the accuracy of their measurement systems, theoretical physicists follow in hot pursuit trying to outperform the experimentalists relying only on the first principles of physics. Kinoshita uses the numerical integration method for this purpose. His computational efforts often set the stage for analytic solutions.