Transient Nutations in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance

Transient nutations of the resultant nuclear magnetic moment vector are set up by applying radiofrequency power in the form of pulses in the neighborhood of resonance (=H₀). The nutations have an initial amplitude depending on the state of magnetization at the start of a pulse and on the proximity to resonance, and are damped by spin-spin and spin-lattice interaction. The thermal relaxation time can be directly found by observing the dependence of initial amplitude on the time between pulses. The spin-spin time constant T₂ can be found from the rate of decay even in the presence of normally disturbing inhomogeneity in magnetic field. Sensitivity is in many cases comparable to that obtained in the modulation method with narrow band amplifiers. The fast response due to the relatively wide band widths used can be applied to a rapid search for unknown resonances. The effects observed are in qualitative accord with predictions based on the Bloch theory.