The longitudinal relaxation time T
sb1 is calculated for a dilute Fermi gas. We include the possibility of arbitrary degrees of polarization P, and uniform external magnetic fields. At low temperatures T
sb1 is proportional to T
sp−2 for the unpolarized gas in agreement with earlier calculations. For a polarized system in zero applied field the separation between up and down Fermi spheres provides an open channel in phase space for spin flipping processes. As temperature is reduced to zero T
sb1 levels off and approaches a constant value which depends sensitively on P, leading to much smaller values of T
sb1 than in the unpolarized case. For relaxation in a uniform external field H, Zeeman energy conservation during spin flipping interactions essentially shifts the location of the T
sp−2 behavior from zero polarization to the polarization P(H) which would be produced in equilibrium with the external field H. When the initial polarization of the system is different from P(H), T
sb1 again approaches a constant value which is equally sensitive to the initial polarization as temperature is reduced to zero. We apply our calculations to the case of dilute
sp3He-HeII solutions. We also consider the calculation of density dependent corrections to T
sb1 for unpolarized, or weakly polarized
sp3He-HeII using the long wavelength limit of the Bardeen-Baym-Pines interaction as a form for the spin independent part of the
sp3He-
sp3He interaction. Owing to the positive sign of the antisymmetric Landau parameter
rmFsbspoa in dilute
sp3He-HeII Fermi Liquid interactions act to screen the magnetic dipole interactions which cause relaxation. To lowest order in density we find that the relaxation rate 1/T
sb1 is reduced by factor
rm(1−3Fsbspoa) which compares favorably with recent calculations of T
sb1 for pure
sp3He.
We have studied NMR spin echoes in
3He liquid in a magnetic field
B0=8 T for temperatures T\ensuremath{\ge}4.5 mK. The data are analyzed in terms of the Leggett-Rice effect to obtain the transverse spin-diffusion coefficient ${\mathit{D}}_{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\perp}}}$(T). For T20 mK we find that ${\mathit{D}}_{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\perp}}}$ is less than measured in earlier experiments at lower
B0. This phenomenon has been predicted for degenerate Fermi systems, due to the phase space created for quasiparticle scattering by spin polarization. The effect we have measured is more pronounced than suggested by scaling a dilute-gas theory result by a Fermi-liquid factor.