Tensor hyperfine coupling, electron-nuclear

The leading term in T nuc is usually the magnetic hyperfine coupling IAS which connects the electron spin S and the nuclear spin 1. It is parameterized by the hyperfine coupling tensor A. The /-dependent nuclear Zeeman interaction and the electric quadrupole interaction are included as 2nd and 3rd terms. Their detailed description for Fe is provided in Sects. 4.3 and 4.4. The total spin Hamiltonian for electronic and nuclear spin variables is then ... 

Here, /3 and / are constants known as the Bohr magneton and nuclear magneton, respectively g and gn are the electron and nuclear g factors a is the hyperfine coupling constant H is the external magnetic field while I and S are the nuclear and electron spin operators. The electronic g factor and the hyperfine constant are actually tensors, but for the hydrogen atom they may be treated, to a good approximation, as scalar quantities. 

The Florence NMRD program (8) (available at www.postgenomicnmr.net) has been developed to calculate the paramagnetic enhancement to the NMRD profiles due to contact and dipolar nuclear relaxation rate in the slow rotation limit (see Section V.B of Chapter 2). It includes the hyperfine coupling of any rhombicity between electron-spin and metal nuclear-spin, for any metal-nucleus spin quantum number, any electron-spin quantum number and any g tensor anisotropy. In case measurements are available at several temperatures, it includes the possibility to consider an Arrhenius relationship for the electron relaxation time, if the latter is field independent. 

In general, fluctuations in any electron Hamiltonian terms, due to Brownian motions, can induce relaxation. Fluctuations of anisotropic g, ZFS, or anisotropic A tensors may provide relaxation mechanisms. The g tensor is in fact introduced to describe the interaction energy between the magnetic field and the electron spin, in the presence of spin orbit coupling, which also causes static ZFS in S > 1/2 systems. The A tensor describes the hyperfine coupling of the unpaired electron(s) with the metal nuclear-spin. Stochastic fluctuations can arise from molecular reorientation (with correlation time Tji) and/or from molecular distortions, e.g., due to collisions (with correlation time t ) (18), the latter mechanism being usually dominant. The electron relaxation time is obtained (15) as a function of the squared anisotropies of the tensors and of the correlation time, with a field dependence due to the term x /(l + x ). 

In addition to g tensor anisotropy, EPR spectra are often strongly affected by hyperfine interactions between the nuclear spin I and the electron spin S. These interactions take the form T A S, where A is the hyperfine coupling tensor. Like the g tensor, the A tensor is a second-order third-rank tensor that expresses orientation dependence, in this case, of the hyperfine coupling. The A and g tensors need not be colinear in other words, A is not necessarily diagonal in the coordinate systems which diagonalize g. 

In addition to the isomer shift and the quadrupole splitting, it is possible to obtain the hyperfine coupling tensor from a Mossbauer experiment if a magnetic field is applied. This additional parameter describes the interactions between impaired electrons and the nuclear magnetic moment. Three terms contribute to the hyperfine coupling (i) the isotropic Fermi contact, (ii) the spin—dipole... 

The calculation of magnetic parameters such as the hyperfine coupling constants and g-factors for oligonuclear clusters is of fundamental importance as a tool for the evaluation of spectroscopic data from EPR and ENDOR experiments. The hyperfine interaction is experimentally interpreted with the spin Hamiltonian (SH) H = S - A-1, where S is the fictitious, electron spin operator related to the ground state of the cluster, A is the hyperfine tensor, and I is the nuclear spin operator. Consequently, it is... 

The hyperfine coupling tensor (A) describes the interaction between the electronic spin density and the nuclear magnetic momentum, and can be split into two terms. The first term, usually referred to as Fermi contact interaction, is an isotropic contribution also known as hyperfine coupling constant (HCC), and is related to the spin density at the corresponding nucleus n by [25]... 

Here /, is the 13C nuclear spin, S is the unpaired electronic spin, and A j- is the Fermi contact hyperfine coupling tensor. This coupling is identical for all 13C nuclei as long as the C60 ion is spherical, but becomes different for different nuclei after the Jahn-Teller distortion leading to an inhomogeneous frequency distribution. The homogeneous width of the 13C NMR lines is, on the other hand, mainly determined by the electron-nuclear dipolar interaction... 

Where (3 is the Bohr magneton, H0 is the applied magnetic field, g is the g-tensor, S is the electron spin, I is the nuclear spin, gn and (3n.are the nuclear splitting factor and the nuclear magneton. The hyperfine coupling tensor A consists of an isotropic contact interaction... 

The isotropic and anisotropic hyperfine coupling terms in a arise from interactions between electron and nuclear spins, and provide information about the nature of the orbital containing the unpaired electron and the extent to which it overlaps with orbitals on adjacent atoms. The anisotropic term can cause similar difficulties to the g tensor anisotropy in analysing spectra of polycrystalline powders extracting coupling constants from spectra of transition metal ions or radicals in zeolites can be difficult or impossible without computer simulation. 

The first-order term with respect to a nuclear magnetic moment I is the hyperfine coupling tensor A, giving the coupling the between the nuclear and electronic magnetic moments. The leading order term (c ) can be evaluated as a simple expectation... 

This procedure (neglect of nuclear Zeeman term) is sometimes also adopted to obtain hyperfine coupling tensors from ESR measurements of free radicals. The method is, however, not suitable for the analysis of hyperfine structure due to a-H in jr-electron radicals of the type )Cc-H at X-band, and other cases where the anisotropic hyperfine coupling and the nuclear Zeeman energy are of comparable magnitudes, as discussed for case 3 below. 

Powder ENDOR lines are usually broadened by the anisotropy of the hyperfine couplings. The parameters of well resolved spectra can be extracted by a visual analysis analogous to that applied in ESR. The principle is indicated in Fig. 3.25 for an 5 = V2 species with anisotropic H hyperfine structure, where the hyperfine coupling tensor of axial symmetry is analysed under the assumption that 0 < A < Aj. < 2 vh- The lines for electronic quantum numbers ms = V2 and -Vi, centered at the nuclear frequency vh 14.4 MHz at X-band, are separated by distances equal to the principal values of the hyperfine coupling tensor as indicated in the figure. Absorption-like peaks separated by A in the 1st derivative spectrum occur due to the step-wise increase of the amplitude in the absorption spectrum, like in powder ESR spectra (Section 3.4.1). The difference in amplitude commonly observed between the ms = /2 branches is caused by the hyperfine enhancement effect on the ENDOR intensities first explained by Whiffen [45a]. The effect of hyperfine enhancement is apparent in Figs. 3.25 and 3.26. 

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