Analyzing the special PFG signal attenuation behavior of intermolecular MQC via the effective phase shift diffusion...

Inter-molecular multiple quantum coherence (iMQC) has important applications in NMR and MRI. However, the current theoretical methods still have some difficulties in analyzing the behavior of iMQC signal attenuation of pulsed field gradient diffusion experiments. In this paper, the iMQC diffusion experiments were analyzed by an effective phase shift diffusion equation (EPSDE) method, which is based on the idea that the accumulating phase shift (APS) can be viewed as the result of a diffusion process in virtual phase space (VPS) with effective diffusion coefficient K(2)(t) D (rad(2)/s) where K(t)=∫0 (t)γg(t')dt' is a wavenumber and D is the physical diffusion coefficient of the spin carrier in the real space. The term K(t(tot)) z1 needs to be added to the APS when K(t(tot)) is not zero. Most of the time, K(t(tot)) equals zero. However, in iMQC experiments, the condition K(t(tot)) equaling zero or being non-zero for each spin depends on the gradient pulse setting. The signal attenuations of these two types of iMQC, zero or non-zero K(t(tot)), were analyzed in detail for free and restricted diffusions, which shows that there are significant differences between these two types of iMQC. Particularly, if an apparent diffusion coefficient D(app) is used to analyze the signal attenuation, it equals nD for zero K(t(tot)) which agrees with current theoretical and experimental reports, while for non-zero K(t(tot)), it equals (2n - 1) D which agrees with experimental results from the literature; there are no similar theoretical results reported for comparison. The result that D(app) equals (2n - 1) D is important because the higher value of D(app) means that non-zero K(t(tot)) iMQC can potentially provide more contrast and measure slower diffusion rates than zero K(t(tot)) iMQC. The EPSDE method provides a new way to analyze iMQC diffusion experiments.