The Invention of the Laser

In this chapter, I describe a scientific rivalry at Columbia University's physics department in the days of the 1950s before and when the laser invented, and the race to build a laser eventually won by a scientist in California in 1960. It tracks the arc from Charles Townes' success in amplifying microwaves with a device he called the maser, to graduate student Gordon Gould's realization of how shorter and more powerful light waves could also be amplified. The chapter describes Gould's notebook, written in 1957, diagramming an optically pumped laser. In the same notebook, he coined the word laser, an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, and suggested possible uses for the coherent light beams he imagined. The chapter also covers Gould's wish to patent and profit from his invention, his mistaken belief that he had to build a laser to receive a patent, and the flirtation with radical politics that barred him from the laboratory where he worked once the government classified the laser project that it was funding. Townes and his colleague and brother-in-law Arthur Schawlow, both eventual Physics Nobelists, meanwhile filed an application and received a patent for what they called an optical maser. Theodore Maiman at Hughes Laboratories built the first working laser in 1960, as the chapter describes. It concludes with the results of Gould's long battle to win basic laser patents and his eventual success.

Low-field microwave-mediated optical hyperpolarization in optically pumped diamond

The emergence of a new class of optically polarizable electronic spins in diamond, nitrogen vacancy (NV) defect centers, has opened interesting new avenues for dynamic nuclear polarization. Here we review methods for the room-temperature hyperpolarization of lattice ¹³C nuclei using optically pumped NV centers, focusing particular attention to a polarization transfer via rotating-frame level anti-crossings. We describe special features of this optical DNP mechanism at low-field, in particular, its deployability to randomly oriented diamond nanoparticles. In addition, we detail methods for indirectly obtaining high-resolution NV ESR spectra via hyperpolarization readout. These mechanistic features provide perspectives for interesting new applications exploiting the optically generated ¹³C hyperpolarization.

Use of dissolved hyperpolarized species in NMR: Practical considerations

Hyperpolarization techniques that can transiently boost nuclear spin polarization are generally carried out at low temperature - as in the case of dynamic nuclear polarization - or at high temperature in the gaseous state - as in the case of optically pumped noble gases. This review aims at describing the various issues and challenges that have been encountered during dissolution of hyperpolarized species, and solutions to these problems that have been or are currently proposed in the literature. During the transport of molecules from the polarizer to the NMR detection region, and when the hyperpolarized species or a precursor of hyperpolarization (e.g. parahydrogen) is introduced into the solution of interest, several obstacles need to be overcome to keep a high level of final magnetization. The choice of the magnetic field, the design of the dissolution setup, and ways to isolate hyperpolarized compounds from relaxation agents will be presented. Due to the non-equilibrium character of the hyperpolarization, new NMR pulse sequences that perform better than the classical ones will be described. Finally, three applications in the field of biology will be briefly mentioned.

Modelling of OPNMR phenomena using photon energy-dependent 〈Sz〉 in GaAs and InP

We have modified the model for optically-pumped NMR (OPNMR) to incorporate a revised expression for the expectation value of the z-projection of the electron spin, 〈S_z〉 and apply this model to both bulk GaAs and a new material, InP. This expression includes the photon energy dependence of the electron polarization when optically pumping direct-gap semiconductors in excess of the bandgap energy, E_g. Rather than using a fixed value arising from coefficients (the matrix elements) for the optical transitions at the k=0 bandedge, we define a new parameter, S_opt(E_ph). Incorporating this revised element into the expression for 〈S_z〉, we have simulated the photon energy dependence of the OPNMR signals from bulk semi-insulating GaAs and semi-insulating InP. In earlier work, we matched calculations of electron spin polarization (alone) to features in a plot of OPNMR signal intensity versus photon energy for optical pumping (Ramaswamy et al., 2010). By incorporating an electron spin polarization which varies with pump wavelength into the penetration depth model of OPNMR signal, we are able to model features in both III-V semiconductors. The agreement between the OPNMR data and the corresponding model demonstrates that fluctuations in the OPNMR intensity have particular sensitivity to light hole-to-conduction band transitions in bulk systems. We provide detailed plots of the theoretical predictions for optical pumping transition probabilities with circularly-polarized light for both helicities of light, broken down into illustrative plots of optical magnetoabsorption and spin polarization, shown separately for heavy-hole and light-hole transitions. These plots serve as an effective roadmap of transitions, which are helpful to other researchers investigating optical pumping effects.

Nuclear polarization by optical pumping in InP:Fe above liquid nitrogen temperature

Hyperpolarized nuclear spins are observed in optically pumped iron-doped InP from 70K to 140K. (31)P NMR was carried out at 9.28T (159.8MHz) during optical excitation with circularly polarized light, using a laser diode (λ∼830nm) as a source. The enhancement of the nuclear spin polarization by optical pumping at 70K is estimated to be about 34 for those nuclei in the region of the sample absorbing light. This enhancement decreases with increasing temperature. As the direction of the enhanced nuclear spin polarization is found parallel or antiparallel to the travelling direction of the σ(+) or σ(-), the contact hyperfine interaction is dominant compared to the dipolar hyperfine interaction.

Preparing and preserving the double quantum coherence in NV- centers in Diamond at low fields

We present and demonstrate a simple idea to excite and preserve the double-quantum-coherence (DQC) in the ground state of the electron spin of the Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color center in diamond. We measure the coherence time of the DQC and compare it to the single quantum coherence time, both, in a Ramsey fringe experiment and under a Hahn echo sequence. We also demonstrate a robust pulse sequence based on the DANTE pulse sequence for selectively isolating the signal from the electron transitions conditional on the state of the always-present Nitrogen spin.

Hyperpolarized cesium ions doped in a glass material

Hyperpolarized (HP) ¹³³Cs nuclear magnetic resonance signals were measured from borosilicate glass cell walls during optical pumping of cesium vapor at high magnetic field (9.4T). Significant signal enhancements were observed when additional heating of the cell wall was provided by intense but non-resonant laser irradiation, with integrated HP ¹³³Cs NMR signals and line widths varying as a function of heating laser power (and hence glass temperature). Given that virtually no Cs ions would originally be present in the glass, absorbed HP Cs atoms rarely met thermally-polarized Cs ions already at the surface; thus, spin-exchange via nuclear dipole interaction cannot be the primary mechanism for injecting spin polarization into the glass. Instead, it is concluded that the absorption and transport of HP atoms into the glass material itself is the dominant mechanism of nuclear spin injection at high temperatures-the first reported experimental demonstration of such a mechanism.

XeNA: an automated 'open-source' (129)Xe hyperpolarizer for clinical use

Here we provide a full report on the construction, components, and capabilities of our consortium's "open-source" large-scale (~1L/h) (129)Xe hyperpolarizer for clinical, pre-clinical, and materials NMR/MRI (Nikolaou et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 110, 14150 (2013)). The 'hyperpolarizer' is automated and built mostly of off-the-shelf components; moreover, it is designed to be cost-effective and installed in both research laboratories and clinical settings with materials costing less than $125,000. The device runs in the xenon-rich regime (up to 1800Torr Xe in 0.5L) in either stopped-flow or single-batch mode-making cryo-collection of the hyperpolarized gas unnecessary for many applications. In-cell (129)Xe nuclear spin polarization values of ~30%-90% have been measured for Xe loadings of ~300-1600Torr. Typical (129)Xe polarization build-up and T1 relaxation time constants were ~8.5min and ~1.9h respectively under our spin-exchange optical pumping conditions; such ratios, combined with near-unity Rb electron spin polarizations enabled by the high resonant laser power (up to ~200W), permit such high PXe values to be achieved despite the high in-cell Xe densities. Importantly, most of the polarization is maintained during efficient HP gas transfer to other containers, and ultra-long (129)Xe relaxation times (up to nearly 6h) were observed in Tedlar bags following transport to a clinical 3T scanner for MR spectroscopy and imaging as a prelude to in vivo experiments. The device has received FDA IND approval for a clinical study of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease subjects. The primary focus of this paper is on the technical/engineering development of the polarizer, with the explicit goals of facilitating the adaptation of design features and operative modes into other laboratories, and of spurring the further advancement of HP-gas MR applications in biomedicine.