Statistical Theory of Spin Relaxation and Diffusion in Solids

A comprehensive theoretical description is given for the spin relaxation and diffusion in solids. The formulation is made in a general statistical-mechanical way. The method of the nonequilibrium statistical operator (NSO) developed by D. N. Zubarev is employed to analyze a relaxation dynamics of a spin subsystem. Perturbation of this subsystem in solids may produce a nonequilibrium state which is then relaxed to an equilibrium state due to the interaction between the particles or with a thermal bath (lattice). The generalized kinetic equations were derived previously for a system weakly coupled to a thermal bath to elucidate the nature of transport and relaxation processes. In this paper, these results are used to describe the relaxation and diffusion of nuclear spins in solids. The aim is to formulate a successive and coherent microscopic description of the nuclear magnetic relaxation and diffusion in solids. The nuclear spin-lattice relaxation is considered and the Gorter relation is derived. As an example, a theory of spin diffusion of the nuclear magnetic moment in dilute alloys (like Cu-Mn) is developed. It is shown that due to the dipolar interaction between host nuclear spins and impurity spins, a nonuniform distribution in the host nuclear spin system will occur and consequently the macroscopic relaxation time will be strongly determined by the spin diffusion. The explicit expressions for the relaxation time in certain physically relevant cases are given.Comment: 41 pages, 119 Refs. Corrected typos, added reference

Limits on the production of scalar leptoquarks from Z (0) decays at LEP

A search has been made for pairs and for single production of scalar leptoquarks of the first and second generations using a data sample of 392000 Z0 decays from the DELPHI detector at LEP 1. No signal was found and limits on the leptoquark mass, production cross section and branching ratio were set. A mass limit at 95% confidence level of 45.5 GeV/c2 was obtained for leptoquark pair production. The search for the production of a single leptoquark probed the mass region above this limit and its results exclude first and second generation leptoquarks D0 with masses below 65 GeV/c2 and 73 GeV/c2 respectively, at 95% confidence level, assuming that the D0lq Yukawa coupling alpha(lambda) is equal to the electromagnetic one. An upper limit is also given on the coupling alpha(lambda) as a function of the leptoquark mass m(D0)