Towards a unified picture of polarization transfer — pulsed DNP and chemically equivalent PHIP #DNPNMR

Published: Friday, 12 July 2024 - 10:00 -0400

Author: Thorsten Maly

Korzeczek, Martin C., Laurynas Dagys, Christoph Müller, Benedikt Tratzmiller, Alon Salhov, Tim Eichhorn, Jochen Scheuer, Stephan Knecht, Martin B. Plenio, and Ilai Schwartz. “Towards a Unified Picture of Polarization Transfer — Pulsed DNP and Chemically Equivalent PHIP.” Journal of Magnetic Resonance 362 (May 2024): 107671.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmr.2024.107671.

Nuclear spin hyperpolarization techniques, such as dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) and parahydrogeninduced polarization (PHIP), have revolutionized nuclear magnetic resonance and magnetic resonance imaging. In these methods, a readily available source of high spin order, either electron spins in DNP or singlet states in hydrogen for PHIP, is brought into close proximity with nuclear spin targets, enabling efficient transfer of spin order under external quantum control. Despite vast disparities in energy scales and interaction mechanisms between electron spins in DNP and nuclear singlet states in PHIP, a pseudo-spin formalism allows us to establish an intriguing equivalence. As a result, the important low-field polarization transfer regime of PHIP can be mapped onto an analogous system equivalent to pulsed-DNP. This establishes a correspondence between key polarization transfer sequences in PHIP and DNP, facilitating the transfer of sequence development concepts. This promises fresh insights and significant cross-pollination between DNP and PHIP polarization sequence developers.