Fast nuclear spin relaxation in hyperpolarized solid 129Xe.
We report extensive new measurements of the longitudinal relaxation time T1 of 129Xe nuclear spins in solid xenon. For temperatures T<120 K and magnetic fields B>0.05 T, we found T1 on the order of hours, in good agreement with previous measurements and with the predicted phonon-scattering limit for the spin-rotation interaction. For T>120 K, our new data show that T1 can be much shorter than the phonon scattering limit. For B = 0.06 T, a field often used to accumulate hyperpolarized xenon, T1 is approximately 6 s near the Xe melting point T(m) = 161.4 K. From T = 50 K to T(m), the new data are in excellent agreement with the theoretical prediction that the relaxation is due to (i) modulation of the spin-rotation interaction by phonons, and (ii) modulation of the dipole-dipole interaction by vacancy diffusion.
Kuzma
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Joseph Henry Laboratory, Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA.
Patton
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Raman
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Happer
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