Muonium spin exchange in spin-polarized media: Spin-flip and -nonflip collisions.

Abstract

The transverse relaxation of the muon spin in muonium due to electron spin exchange with a polarized spin-1/2 medium is investigated. Stochastic calculations, which assume that spin exchange is a Poisson process, are carried out for the case where the electron spin polarization of the medium is on the same axis as the applied field. Two precession signals of muonium observed in intermediate fields (B>30 G) are shown to have different relaxation rates which depend on the polarization of the medium. Furthermore, the precession frequencies are shifted by an amount which depends on the spin-nonflip rate. From the two relaxation rates and the frequency shift in intermediate fields, one can determine (i) the encounter rate of muonium and the paramagnetic species, (ii) the polarization of the medium, and most importantly (iii) the quantum-mechanical phase shift (and its sign) associated with the potential energy difference between electron singlet and triplet encounters. Effects of spin-nonflip collisions on spin dynamics are discussed for non-Poisson as well as Poisson processes. In unpolarized media, the time evolution of the muon spin in muonium is not influenced by spin-nonflip collisions, if the collision process is Poissonian. This seemingly obvious statement is not true anymore in non-Poissonian processes, i.e., it is necessary to specify both spin-flip and spin-nonflip rates to fully characterize spin dynamics.