Dramatic improvement in the "Bulk" hyperpolarization of 131Xe via spin exchange optical pumping probed using in situ low-field NMR

Michael J Molway; Liana Bales-Shaffer; Kaili Ranta; James Ball; Eleanor Sparling; Mia Prince; Daniel Cocking; Dustin Basler; Megan Murphy; Bryce E Kidd; Abdulbasit Tobi Gafar; Justin Porter; Kierstyn Albin; Matthew S Rosen; Eduard Y Chekmenev; W Michael Snow; Michael J Barlow; Boyd M Goodson

doi:10.1016/j.jmr.2023.107521

Dramatic improvement in the "Bulk" hyperpolarization of ¹³¹Xe via spin exchange optical pumping probed using in situ low-field NMR

J Magn Reson. 2023 Sep:354:107521. doi: 10.1016/j.jmr.2023.107521. Epub 2023 Jul 10.

Authors

Michael J Molway¹, Liana Bales-Shaffer¹, Kaili Ranta¹, James Ball², Eleanor Sparling², Mia Prince², Daniel Cocking², Dustin Basler¹, Megan Murphy¹, Bryce E Kidd¹, Abdulbasit Tobi Gafar¹, Justin Porter¹, Kierstyn Albin¹, Matthew S Rosen³, Eduard Y Chekmenev⁴, W Michael Snow⁵, Michael J Barlow², Boyd M Goodson⁶

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemical and Biomolecular Sciences, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale 62901, IL, USA.
² School of Medicine, University of Nottingham, Queens Medical Centre, Nottingham, UK.
³ A.A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston 02129, MA, USA; Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge 02138, MA, USA.
⁴ Department of Chemistry, Integrative Biosciences (Ibio), Karmanos Cancer Institute (KCI), Wayne State University, Detroit 48202, MI, USA; Russian Academy of Sciences, Leninskiy Prospekt 14, 119991 Moscow, Russia.
⁵ Department of Physics, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA.
⁶ School of Chemical and Biomolecular Sciences, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale 62901, IL, USA. Electronic address: bgoodson@chem.siu.edu.

PMID: 37487304
DOI: 10.1016/j.jmr.2023.107521

Abstract

We report on hyperpolarization of quadrupolar (I=3/2) ¹³¹Xe via spin-exchange optical pumping. Observations of the ¹³¹Xe polarization dynamics via in situ low-field NMR show that the estimated alkali-metal/¹³¹Xe spin-exchange rates can be large enough to compete with ¹³¹Xe spin relaxation. ¹³¹Xe polarization up to 7.6±1.5% was achieved in ∼8.5×10²⁰ spins-a ∼100-fold improvement in the total spin angular momentum-potentially enabling various applications, including: measurement of spin-dependent neutron-¹³¹Xe s-wave scattering; sensitive searches for time-reversal violation in neutron-¹³¹Xe interactions beyond the Standard Model; and surface-sensitive pulmonary MRI.

Keywords: Hyperpolarized xenon; Nuclear physics; Polarized targets; Spin relaxation; TRIV searches.