14N pulsed nuclear quadrupole resonance. 3. Effect of a pulse train. Optimal conditions for data averaging

The calculations developed in this paper aim at determining the optimal conditions of a NQR experiment when a transition is monitored by means of a pulse train with pulses of identical duration and signal acquisition after each pulse; coherences are assumed to vanish by effective transverse relaxation prior to every new pulse. These calculations demonstrate that, as in NMR, a steady state is effectively reached for any value of the recycle time. However, by contrast with NMR, it is shown that, for optimal data averaging under steady state conditions, the recycle time T can be kept as low as possible (the only limitation is the acquisition time). Nutation curves (signal amplitude versus pulse length) calculated in the steady state case are shown to depend strongly on the ratio T/T ₁ (T ₁: longitudinal relaxation time). The signal growth as a function of T/T ₁under averaging of the first transients has been evaluated as well as the number of pulses necessary for reaching a steady state.