Nuclear spin relaxation by intramolecular interactions in gases of homonuclear diatomic molecules

Abstract

The differential equations which describe the relaxation of macroscopic observables associated with nuclear spins in homonuclear diatomic molecules are derived using an expansion of the nuclear spin density matrix in terms of irreducible tensors. It is shown, using an intramolecular quadrupole mechanism, that the only difference between nuclear spin relaxation of the ortho- and para-species arises from the rotational states being restricted to odd and even values. This difference is vanishingly small at high temperatures so that the relaxation equations for nuclear magnetization become identical for both species. A previous paper predicting a difference even at high temperatures is shown to be in error and is corrected.