Multiple quantum experiments on nuclear magnetic resonance on spins of 19 F in calcium fluorapatite have been performed. It has been shown that more than 97% of the observed signal refers to the multiple quantum coherences of the zeroth and plus/minus second orders. The dependences of the intensities of these coherences on the time of the preparation period of the multiple quantum NMR experiment have been obtained. The dipole relaxation of multiple quantum coherences on the evolution period of the multiple quantum nuclear magnetic resonance experiment has been studied. A probe providing short radio-frequency pulses with the duration up to 0.3 μs has been developed for experiments. The experimental results show that the studied system can be used for the transmission of quantum information and the study of the decoherence process in strongly correlated multispin clusters.
Multirate characterization of spin responses in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a promising approach to fingerprinting complex molecules in the presence of multiple relaxation mechanisms. Here we present experimental and theoretical investigations simultaneously accessing 8 relaxation rates describing the density matrix of two adjacent non-equivalent nuclear spins 1/2 (
1H and
13C) belonging to a molecule in a liquid. The selected nuclear pair is stable with respect to chemical exchange. Some of the rates are obtained from conventional measurements of inversion recovery and nuclear Overhauser effect, while other, less conventional ones, are extracted from the relaxation initialized by the maximally entangled pseudo-pure Bell states (Bell PPSs) of the spin pair. The Bell PPSs are created using a hereby introduced method based on a detuned Hartmann-Hahn double resonance condition. Microscopic theory behind the measured relaxation rates is presented, and its consistency is demonstrated by several parameter-free tests. In particular, it is shown both theoretically and experimentally, that the eigenmodes of the off-diagonal relaxation of the two-spin density matrix can be selectively initialized using Bell PPSs. Our multirate analysis suggests that the measured off-diagonal relaxation is partly due to an unconventional mechanism arising from very weak
J-couplings of the spin pair with fluctuating distant nuclear spins. Furthermore, we identify a dimensionless ratio of diagonal relaxation rates, which is determined exclusively by intra-pair magnetic dipolar interaction and hence possesses a universal value for a broad class of nuclear spin pairs. This value is consistent with both our experiments and other experiments reported in the literature.