Spin amplification in solution magnetic resonance using radiation damping

The sensitive detection of dilute solute spins is critical to biomolecular NMR. In this work, a spin amplifier for detecting dilute solute magnetization is developed using the radiation damping interaction in solution magnetic resonance. The evolution of the solvent magnetization, initially placed along the unstable -z direction, is triggered by the radiation damping field generated by the dilute solute magnetization. As long as the radiation damping field generated by the solute is larger than the corresponding thermal noise field generated by the sample coil, the solute magnetization can effectively trigger the evolution of the water magnetization under radiation damping. The coupling between the solute and solvent magnetizations via the radiation damping field can be further improved through a novel bipolar gradient scheme, which allows solute spins with chemical shift differences much greater than the effective radiation damping field strength to affect the solvent magnetizations more efficiently. Experiments performed on an aqueous acetone solution indicate that solute concentrations on the order of 10(-5) that of the solvent concentration can be readily detected using this spin amplifier.