Further Information:

Production and Exploitation of Hyperpolarised Species

Prof John R Owers-Bradley

Hyperpolarisation is the technology for creating a highly non-equilibrium nuclear polarisation within the species being "hyperpolarised". To date hyperpolarisation has been achieved in isotopes of noble gases, Lithium, Carbon and compound semiconductors such as GaAs and InP. In most fields of scientific endeavour, an order of magnitude improvement in a given parameter space such as signal, speed or sensitivity is considered a breakthrough. Hyperpolarisation has shown the feasibility of 5 orders of magnitude enhancement in the nuclear magnetism! The great challenge ahead and the aim of this work is to exploit this enhancement within a broad range of disciplines by developing the underlying technology of hyperpolarisation.

Production of hyperpolarised noble gases

Two optical pumping techniques, spin exchange and metastable optical pumping (SEOP and MEOP) are currently used to produce hyperpolarised noble gases (He-3 and Xe-129) in sufficient quantity and level of polarisation for use with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and as effective neutron spin polarisers /analysers. In this work, we are developing current scientific understanding of MEOP and SEOP as well as metastability exchange by metastable electron beam pumping (MEBP) and brute force processes in order to provide improved production and polarisation levels. Our aim is to incorporate these new technologies and methods to produce "state of the art" compact and inexpensive MEOP/MEBP and SEOP facilities with storage and transport capability.