Abstract
The information gained from magnetic resonance imaging has provided useful insight into many insulators. Extending this technique to conductors requires an alternative means of spin manipulation besides electromagnetic radiation. A method to use neutron measurement of the Zeeman splitting to measure the relaxation time is described. The Zeeman splitting is observed by a neutron spectrometer as an incoherent signal with an energy transfer equal to the Zeeman energy. This energy scale is so small that fields in excess of 15 T are required to sufficiently separate this line from other incoherent processes. Once the Zeeman splitting is observed, a perturbation of the system is required to enable measurement of the nuclear spin relaxation time; the physical quantity measured in a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance experiment. The proposed perturbation is a pulsed field of 10 T. The relaxation of the Zeeman splitting back to the 15 T condition is then recorded as a function of time. The resultant data is the aforementioned measure of the relaxation time. With the ability to measure the relaxation times the image map can be created by rastering the sample with respect to the beam.
