Nuclear relaxation overview

This chapter is an overview of what magnetic nuclear relaxation can bring to our knowledge of the actinide ions and their use in the nuclear industry. Most results are quite recent and the field is wide open. The author hopes this chapter will attract the attention of NMR specialists who should not be distraught by the experimental difficulties that always accompany the handling of radioactive materials. On the other hand, nuclear chemists and physicists will hopefully discover that NMRD is an interesting supplement to their favorite spectroscopic techniques. 

Before discussing some raultiexponential relaxation functions, we will consider some specific aspects of theoretical methods describing the relaxation phenomena in nuclear magnetic resonance. Various methods have been proposed in the literature since the work of Bloembergen, Purcell, and Pound (1). Many of them have some common features like the use of density matrix theory, correlation functions, and their associated spectral density functions. People interested in the foundations of these theories will find some excellent book chapters and review articles in the literature (7-9,21). Slichter s book (Chapter 5) contains a very good introduction to the density matrix which is of crucial importance in all these theories (3). On the other hand, Abragam s book (2) remains a "Bible" in this field. The more recent book of Lenk (5) contains very concise definitions of many terms and concepts widely used in all the relaxation theories. Moreover, this author presents an excellent overview of many recent theories, especially those based on irreversible thermodynamics ... 

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