• Atomic Physics Faculty
  • William Happer
  • Yuan-Yu Jau
  • Michael Romalis
• Biophysics Theory and Experiment
• Condensed Matter Experiment
• Condensed Matter Theory
• Cosmology Experiment
• Cosmology Theory
• High Energy Experiment
• High Energy Theory
• Mathematical Physics
• Particle and Nuclear Astrophysics

• Quantitative and Computational Biology
• Cosmology at Princeton
• Lewis-Sigler Institute
• Princeton Center for Theoretical Science
• Princeton Institute for the Science
  and Technology of Materials

I am interested in the physics of spin-polarized atoms and nuclei, and in the application of these spin-polarized systems in other areas. Together with Professor Cates, research associates and graduate students at Princeton and collaborators from various medical schools, I have been working on ways to use polarized 3He and 129Xe for magnetic resonance imaging of lungs and perhaps other organs. In most of our work we use circularly polarized laser photons to pump angular momentum into electron spins, and we use hyperfine interactions to transfer angular momentum from the polarized electrons to the nuclei. In appropriate containers, the polarized nuclei can be stored for hours or even days with little loss of spin. Much of our present work is aimed at understanding the slow loss of spin which occurs in these containers. The physics of this process is not well understood, especially in the case of surface interactions.

S e l e c t e d   P u b l i c a t i o n s:

(with R. J. Fitzgerald and K. L. Sauer) Cross Relaxation in Laser-polarized Liquid Xenon, Chemical Physics Letters, 284, 87 (1998). (with S. Appelt, A. Ben-Amar Baranga, C. J. Erickson, M. Romalis and A. R. Young) Theory of Spin-Exchange Optical Pumping of 3He and 129Xe, Phys. Rev. A 58, 1412 (1998) (with A. Ben-Amar Baranga, S. Appelt, M. V. Romalis, C. J. Erickson, A. R. Young, and G. D. Cates) Polarization of 3He by Spin-Exchange with Optically Pumped Rb and K Vapors, Phys. Rev. Letters 80, 2801 (1998). (with A. Ben-Amar Baranga, S. Appelt, C. J. Erickson, and A. R. Young) Alkali-Metal-Atom Polarization Imaging in High-Pressure Optical-Pumping Cells, Phys. Rev. A 58, 2282 (1998). (with D. Levron et al.) Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Hyperpolarized 129Xe Produced by Spin Exchange with Diode-Laser Pumped Cs, Applied Physics Letters 73, 2666 (1998). (with D. K. Walter and T. G. Walker) Estimates of the Relative Magnitudes of the Isotropic and Anisotropic Magnetic-Dipole Hyperfine Interactions in Alkali-Metal-Noble-Gas Atoms, Phys. Rev. A 58, 3642 (1998). (with S. Appelt, A. Ben-Amar Baranga, and A. R. Young) Light Narrowing of Rubidium Magnetic Resonance Lines in High-Pressure Optical-Pumping Cells, Phys. Rev. A, 59, 1 (1999). (with M. K. L. Sauer and R. J. Fitzgerald ) Resonance Technique to Probe 129Rb Surface Interactions, Phys. Rev. A, 59, R1746 (1999). (with M. Romalis) Inhomogeneously Broadened Spin Masers, Phys. Rev. A, 60, 1385 (1999).