The effect of experimental parameters on the signal decay in double-PGSE experiments: negative diffractions and enhancement of structural information

Double pulsed gradient spin echo (d-PGSE) experiment has been recently suggested for detecting microscopic anisotropy in macroscopically isotropic samples. This sequence is complex and has many variables, including, intra alia, combinations of directions and amplitudes of the pulsed gradients, diffusion times in each of the encoding periods and the mixing time period. The effect of these experimental parameters of the d-PGSE sequence was studied in an array of water filled microcapillaries of micron diameters. We found that negative diffractions occur, as indeed predicted by recently published simulations. We also found differential effects of prolongation of the mixing time between collinear and orthogonal d-PGSE experiments. The d-PGSE experiment in the collinear direction perpendicular to the long axis of the cylinder exhibited a marked dependence on the mixing time, while the orthogonal d-PGSE experiment exhibited no such dependence at all. Interestingly, one of the most important predictions by the simulations was that the d-PGSE sequence could potentially discriminate between compartments of different sizes better than the single PGSE (s-PGSE) and it seems that our experimental results indeed corroborate these predictions.