Elucidation of central line refocusing in quadrupolar echo formation

Abstract

Quadrupolar interaction is a strong line broadening agent for nuclei of half-integer spin except the central line. The two-pulse quadrupolar echo technique is widely used, which refocuses the quadrupolar broadening. Echo formation is due to the cancellation of quadrupolar broadening effect by the applied two pulses. Since the central line is not quadrupolar broadened, it should not be involved in the echo formation. However, the central line peak always appears in experiments. This is explained qualitatively here by close examination on the time development of individual coherence. This explanation is used to predict the number of echoes that will be formed with 2 pulse sequence for nuclei of I = 3/2, 5/2, 7/2, 9/2 with ease