Rapid survey of nuclear quadrupole resonance by broadband excitation with comb modulation and dual-mode acquisition

Abstract

Nuclear Quadrupole Resonance (NQR) provides spectra carrying information as to the electric-field gradient around nuclei with a spin quantum number I > 1/2 and offers helpful clues toward characterizing the electronic structure of materials of chemical interest. A major challenge in NQR is finding hitherto unknown resonance frequencies, which can scatter over a wide range, requiring time consuming repetitive measurements with stepwise frequency increments. Here, we report on an efficient, two-step NQR protocol by bringing rapid-scan and frequency-comb together. In the first step, wideband excitation and simultaneous signal acquisition, both realized by a non-adiabatic, frequency-swept hyperbolic secant (HS) pulse with comb modulation, offers a clue for the existence/absence of the resonance within the frequency region under investigation. When and only when the sign of the resonance has been detected, the second step is implemented to compensate the limited detection bandwidth of the first and to unambiguously determine the NQR frequency. We also study the spin dynamics under the comb-modulated HS pulse by numerical simulations, and experimentally demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed scheme, which is referred to as RApid-Scan with GApped excitation with Dual-mode Operation (RASGADO) NQR.