An array of four 87 Rb vector magnetometers are used to detect nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) signals in an unshielded environment at 1 MHz. With a baseline of 25 cm, the length of the array, radio-frequency interference mitigation (RFIM) is also demonstrated; a radio-station signal is suppressed by a factor of 20 without degradation to the signal of interest. With these compact sensors, in which the probe beam passes through twice, the fundamental limit to detection sensitivity is found to be photon shot noise. More passes of the probe beam overcome this limitation. With a sensor of similar effective volume, 0.25 cm 3 , but 25 times more passes, the sensitivity is improved by an order of magnitude to 1.7 ± 0.2 fT/ √ Hz.

We demonstrate a radio-frequency potassium-vapor magnetometer operating with sensitivities of 0.3 fT/Hz at 0.5 MHz and 0.9 fT/Hz at 1.31 MHz in the absence of radio-frequency and mu-metal or magnetic shielding. The use of spatially separated magnetometers, two voxels within the same cell, permits for the subtraction of common mode noise and the retention of a gradient signal, as from a local source. At 0.5 MHz the common mode noise was white and measured to be 3.4 fT/Hz; upon subtraction the noise returned to the values observed when the magnetometer was shielded. At 1.31 MHz, the common mode noise was from a nearby radio station and was reduced by a factor of 33 upon subtraction, limited only by the radio signal picked up by receiver electronics. Potential applications include in-the-field low-field magnetic resonance, such as the use of nuclear quadrupole resonance for the detection of explosives.

Using double-resonance conditions, in which the Larmor frequency of a spin-1/2 nucleus is matched to one of the nuclear quadrupole resonance frequencies of a spin-1 nucleus, the authors demonstrate increased cross relaxation between the two nuclear spin species. They calculate the cross-relaxation rate using the motionally averaged heterogeneous dipole Hamiltonian as a perturbation to the combined quadrupole and Zeeman Hamiltonians. Using this cross-relaxation rate, in addition to hydrogen and nitrogen autorelaxation rates, expressions governing spin-1/2 and spin-1 spin-lattice relaxation are determined. With ammonium nitrate, containing nitrogen (spin-1) and hydrogen (spin-1/2), increased nitrogen signal and spin-lattice relaxation are demonstrated, using fields less than 120 G. The cross-relaxation rate is also measured and an overall signal/noise improvement by a factor of 2.3+/-0.1 is attained.

We demonstrate the creation of two novel double-resonance conditions between spin-1 and spin-1/2 nuclei in a crystalline solid. Using a magnetic field oscillating at the spin-1/2 Larmor frequency, the nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) frequency is matched to the Rabi or Rabi plus Larmor frequency, as opposed to the Larmor frequency as is conventionally done. We derive expressions for the cross-polarization rate for all three conditions in terms of the relevant secular dipolar Hamiltonian, and demonstrate with these expressions how to measure the strength of the heterogenous dipolar coupling using only low magnetic fields. In addition, the combination of different resonance conditions permits the measurement of the spin-1/2 angular momentum vector using spin-1 NQR, opening up an alternate modality for the monitoring of low-field nuclear magnetic resonance. We use ammonium nitrate to explore these resonance conditions, and furthermore use the oscillating field to increase the signal-to-noise ratio per time by a factor of 3.5 for NQR detection of this substance.