Composite pulse excitation in quadrupole echo spectroscopy

Concatenated Composite Pulses Applied to Liquid-State Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy

The error-robust and short composite operations named ConCatenated Composite Pulses (CCCPs), developed as high-precision unitary operations in quantum information processing (QIP), are derived from composite pulses widely employed in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). CCCPs simultaneously compensate for two types of systematic errors, which was not possible with the known composite pulses in NMR. Our experiments demonstrate that CCCPs are powerful and versatile tools not only in QIP but also in NMR.

Controlling the Dynamics of Quadrupolar Spin-1 Nuclei by Means of Average Hamiltonian Theory When Irradiated with Modified Composite Quadrupolar Echo Pulse Sequences

The importance of the average Hamiltonian theory and its antecedent the Magnus expansion are discussed. The investigation of its convergence in different situations is very important. In this paper, we introduced a well-established approach to minimize the zeroth-order average Hamiltonian for modified composite pulse sequence in quadrupolar spectroscopy of spin-1. We designed two modified composite pulse sequences constructed by modifying the timing sequence in the original composite pulse sequences.17 We tested various configurations of times associated with the free evolution of the spin system in the modified composite pulses. We found that by decreasing the time delays between the pulses associated with the free evolution of spin system, the line shapes become increasingly better until we obtained the new modified composite pulses showing improvement of the signal compared to the original composite pulse sequences.17 This promising work is expected to play an important role not only for recording high resolution spectra of amino acids, pharmaceutical samples, and peptides but also for probing structural and dynamic information in biomolecules. The generality of the present theoretical scheme points to potential applications in solid-state NMR, to problems in chemical physics, quantum mechanics and theoretical developments, chemistry, and physical chemistry, and in interdisciplinary research areas whenever they include spin dynamics approach.

Revisiting NMR composite pulses for broadband (2)H excitation

Quadrupolar echo NMR spectroscopy of static solids often requires RF excitation that covers spectral widths exceeding 100 kHz, which is difficult to obtain due to instrumental limitations. In this work we revisit four well-known composite pulses (COM-I, II, III and IV) for broadband excitation in deuterium quadrupolar echo spectroscopy. These composite pulses are combined with several phase cycling schemes that were previously shown to decrease finite pulse width distortions in deuterium solid-echo experiments performed with two single pulses. The simulations and experiments show that COM-II and IV composite pulses combined with an 8-step phase cycling aid in achieving broadband excitation with limited pulse width distortions.

On the application of magic echo cycles for quadrupolar echo spectroscopy of spin-1 nuclei

Magic echo cycles are introduced for performing quadrupolar echo spectroscopy of spin-1 nuclei. An analysis is performed via average Hamiltonian theory showing that the evolution under chemical shift or static field inhomogeneity can be refocused simultaneously with the quadrupolar interaction using these cycles. Due to the higher convergence in the Magnus expansion, with sufficient RF power, magic echo based quadrupolar echo spectroscopy outperforms the conventional two pulse quadrupolar echo in signal to noise. Experiments highlighting a signal to noise enhancement over the entire bandwidth of the quadrupolar pattern of a powdered sample of deuterated polyethelene are shown.

Spin-echoes in nitrogen-14 quadrupolar spin-system with axially symmetric electric field gradient tensor

The behaviour of the magnetisation in the spin-1 system with the axial symmetry of the electric field gradient (EFG) tensor was analysed theoretically. The behaviour of the NQR signals in hexamethylenetetramine (C6H12N4) was also studied experimentally using the pulse NQR technique and sensitive equipment. It was shown that the axial symmetry of the EFG in a sample could not be the reason why spin-echo signals were not observed in conventional pulse experiments for the same type of sample. A very short spin-spin relaxation time T2 seems to be the reason of that. The signal-to-noise ratio was sufficient for measuring T2 in C6H12N4, which had not been reported earlier. Experimental results of applying certain pulse sequences to the 14N NQR in a sample are also presented.

Measuring (13)C-(2)D dipolar couplings with a universal REDOR dephasing curve

A (13)C-observe REDOR experiment is described which allows (13)C-(2)D dipolar couplings to be obtained by a universal dipolar dephasing curve. Previous (13)C-observe REDOR experiments on (13)C-(2)D spin pairs generally relied on numerical simulations to obtain the dipolar coupling. The REDOR experiment described in this article is based on a deuterium composite pulse, and the data analysis eliminates the need for numerical simulations and is the same as the traditional REDOR analysis performed on pairs of spin-12 nuclei. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.

Time symmetry: an application to shaped pulse excitation of spin-1 systems

The role of time symmetry in the design of amplitude-modulated (shaped) pulses for spin-1 excitation is examined. The quaternion calculus is used to calculate the quaternion elements (Euler-Rodrigues parameters) of each shaped pulse. In this manner, it is shown how the simplicity and compactness of the Euler-Rodrigues parametrization can be used to significantly expedite a computer search for optimal time-symmetric shaped pulses. Theoretical and experimental tests of a new class of symmetric quadrupole-shaped (SQUASH) pulses identified by this procedure show a significant improvement in both excitation bandwidth and efficiency in comparison to the time-asymmetric QUASH shaped pulse previously identified.