We report the first quantitative theoretical and experimental studies of frequency shifts of nuclear-magnetic-resonance (NMR) lines of noble-gas atoms and the corresponding frequency shifts of electron-paramagnetic-resonance (EPR) lines of alkali-metal atoms in mixtures of nuclear spin-polarized noble gases and vapors of spin-polarized alkali-metal atoms. The shifts are primarily due to the Fermi-contact hyperfine interaction. For the heavier noble gases there can be relatively large (\ensuremath{\approxeq}10%) contributions to the shifts from van der Waals molecules. The NMR frequencies of polarized
83Kr and
129Xe were measured in a vapor of spin-polarized alkali-metal atoms oriented parallel and antiparallel to the external magnetic field. The shift in the EPR frequency of the alkali-metal vapor due to the polarized noble-gas nuclei was measured simultaneously, thus providing a measurement of the absolute noble-gas nuclear polarization. The frequency shifts can be used as a convenient way to measure the absolute nuclear spin polarization of noble gases.
Spin-exchange optical pumping (SEOP) is a method for producing spin-hyperpolarized noble gas nuclei, such as 129Xe and 131Xe, which are used in various magnetic resonance applications from fundamental physics to quantum sensing and medical imaging. In SEOP, optically polarized alkali-metal atoms transfer their spin polarization to the noble gas nuclei in gas-phase collision events via the hyperfine coupling (HFC) between the alkali valence electron and the noble gas nucleus. While the polarization transfer physics of spin
I=1/2 nuclei, such as 129Xe, is relatively well understood, that of spin
I>1/2 nuclei, such as 131Xe (
I=3/2), has been far less studied, and no rigorous theoretical model has been presented to date. To this end, we derive a simple analytical model for the upper limit, neglecting relaxation, of the SEOP polarization transfer, applicable to noble gases with arbitrary nuclear spin. Analytical evaluation of the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff expansion for the time evolution of the spin density operator
ρ^(t) reveals that only even-order terms in the HFC contribute to the polarization transfer, with the leading-order quadratic term being the most significant. We obtain a result similar to that derived for the spin-exchange cross section by Herman [Phys. Rev. 137, A 1062 (1965)], but in a more general framework for the time evolution of
ρ^(t) that is also more familiar to magnetic resonance researchers. The model is applied to understand the difference in the polarization transfer efficiency between 129Xe and 131Xe, yielding results in agreement with previous experiments. We also validate the model by comparison to detailed numerical multiscale simulations of the SEOP process, where full quantum-chemically computed spin Hamiltonians sampled from molecular dynamics simulations of the gas-phase collision events are used to propagate the spin dynamics.
We report a novel method of measuring the spin polarization of alkali-metal atoms by detecting the NMR frequency shifts of noble gases. We calculated the profile of 87Rb D1 line absorption cross sections. We then measured the absorption profile of the sample cell, from which we calculated the 87Rb number densities at different temperatures. Then we measured the frequency shifts resulted from the spin polarization of the 87Rb atoms and calculated its polarization degrees at different temperatures. The behavior of frequency shifts versus temperature in experiment was consistent with theoretical calculation, which may be used as compensative signal for the NMRG closed-loop control system.