Erwin L. Hahn: A Biographical Memoir

Erwin Louis Hahn was one of the most innovative and influential physical scientists in recent history, impacting generations of scientists through his work in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), optics, and the intersection of these two fields. Starting with his discovery of the spin echo, a phenomenon of monumental significance and practical importance, Hahn launched a major revolution in how we think about spin physics, with numerous implications to follow in many other areas of science. Students of NMR and coherent optics quickly discover that many of the key concepts and techniques in these fields derive directly from his work.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures; prepared for submission to the NA

Fourier Transform Multiple Quantum Nuclear Magnetic Resonance

The excitation and detection of multiple quantum transitions in systems of coupled spins offers, among other advantages, an increase in resolution over single quantum n.m.r. since the number of lines decreases as the order of the transition increases. This paper reviews the motivation for detecting multiple quantum transitions by a Fourier transform experiment and describes an experimental approach to high resolution multiple quantum spectra in dipolar systems along with results on some protonated liquid crystal systems. A simple operator formalism for the essential features of the time development is presented and some applications in progress are discussed

Understanding the magnetic resonance spectrum of nitrogen vacancy centers in an ensemble of randomly-oriented nanodiamonds

Nanodiamonds containing nitrogen vacancy (NV-) centers show promise for a number of emerging applications including targeted in vivo imaging and generating nuclear spin hyperpolarization for enhanced NMR spectroscopy and imaging. Here, we develop a detailed understanding of the magnetic resonance behavior of NV- centers in an ensemble of nanodiamonds with random crystal orientations. Two-dimensional optically detected magnetic resonance spectroscopy reveals the distribution of energy levels, spin populations, and transition probabilities that give rise to a complex spectrum. We identify overtone transitions that are inherently insensitive to crystal orientation and give well-defined transition frequencies that access the entire nanodiamond ensemble. These transitions may be harnessed for high-resolution imaging and generation of nuclear spin hyperpolarization. The data are well described by numerical simulations from the zero- to high-field regimes, including the intermediate regime of maximum complexity. We evaluate the prospects of nanodiamond ensembles specifically for nuclear hyperpolarization and show that frequency-swept dynamic nuclear polarization may transfer a large amount of the NV- center's hyperpolarization to nuclear spins by sweeping over a small region of its spectrum.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

The Dynamic Structure Factor of the 1D Bose Gas near the Tonks-Girardeau Limit

While the 1D Bose gas appears to exhibit superfluid response under certain conditions, it fails the Landau criterion according to the elementary excitation spectrum calculated by Lieb. The apparent riddle is solved by calculating the dynamic structure factor of the Lieb-Liniger 1D Bose gas. A pseudopotential Hamiltonian in the fermionic representation is used to derive a Hartree-Fock operator, which turns out to be well-behaved and local. The Random-Phase approximation for the dynamic structure factor based on this derivation is calculated analytically and is expected to be valid at least up to first order in $1/\gamma$, where $\gamma$ is the dimensionless interaction strength of the model. The dynamic structure factor in this approximation clearly indicates a crossover behavior from the non-superfluid Tonks to the superfluid weakly-interacting regime, which should be observable by Bragg scattering in current experiments.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures misprints in formulas correcte

Nonlinear Dynamics and Nucleation Kinetics in Near-Critical Liquids

The objective of our study is to model the nonlinear behavior of a near-critical liquid following a rapid change of the temperature and/or other thermodynamic parameters (pressure, external electric or gravitational field). The thermodynamic critical point is manifested by large, strongly correlated fluctuations of the order parameter (particle density in liquid-gas systems, concentration in binary solutions) in the critical range of scales. The largest critical length scale is the correlation radius r(sub c). According to the scaling theory, r(sub c) increases as r(sub c) = r(sub 0)epsilon(exp -alpha) when the nondimensional distance epsilon = (T - T(sub c))/T(sub c) to the critical point decreases. The normal gravity alters the nature of correlated long-range fluctuations when one reaches epsilon approximately equal to 10(exp -5), and correspondingly the relaxation time, tau(r(sub c)), is approximately equal to 10(exp -3) seconds; this time is short when compared to the typical experimental time. Close to the critical point, a rapid, relatively small temperature change may perturb the thermodynamic equilibrium on many scales. The critical fluctuations have a hierarchical structure, and the relaxation involves many length and time scales. Above the critical point, in the one-phase region, we consider the relaxation of the liquid following a sudden temperature change that simultaneously violates the equilibrium on many scales. Below T(sub c), a non-equilibrium state may include a distribution of small scale phase droplets; we consider the relaxation of such a droplet following a temperature change that has made the phase of the matrix stable

Long-lived heteronuclear spin-singlet states

We report observation of long-lived spin-singlet states in a 13C-1H spin pair at zero magnetic field. In 13C-labeled formic acid, we observe spin-singlet lifetimes as long as 37 seconds, about a factor of three longer than the T1 lifetime of dipole polarization in the triplet state. We also observe that the lifetime of the singlet-triplet coherence, T2, is longer than T1. Moreover, we demonstrate that this singlet states formed by spins of a heteronucleus and a 1H nucleus, can exhibit longer lifetimes than the respective triplet states in systems consisting of more than two nuclear spins. Although long-lived homonuclear spin-singlet states have been extensively studied, this is the first experimental observation of analogous spin-singlets consisting of a heteronucleus and a proton.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Measurement of Untruncated Nuclear Spin Interactions via Zero- to Ultra-Low-Field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance

Zero- to ultra-low-field nuclear magnetic resonance (ZULF NMR) provides a new regime for the measurement of nuclear spin-spin interactions free from effects of large magnetic fields, such as truncation of terms that do not commute with the Zeeman Hamiltonian. One such interaction, the magnetic dipole-dipole coupling, is a valuable source of spatial information in NMR, though many terms are unobservable in high-field NMR, and the coupling averages to zero under isotropic molecular tumbling. Under partial alignment, this information is retained in the form of so-called residual dipolar couplings. We report zero- to ultra-low-field NMR measurements of residual dipolar couplings in acetonitrile-2-$^{13}$C aligned in stretched polyvinyl acetate gels. This represents the first investigation of dipolar couplings as a perturbation on the indirect spin-spin $J$-coupling in the absence of an applied magnetic field. As a consequence of working at zero magnetic field, we observe terms of the dipole-dipole coupling Hamiltonian that are invisible in conventional high-field NMR. This technique expands the capabilities of zero- to ultra-low-field NMR and has potential applications in precision measurement of subtle physical interactions, chemical analysis, and characterization of local mesoscale structure in materials.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure