Nuclear Spin Relaxation by Defect Mechanisms of Self-Diffusion in Crystals

Abstract

The present paper shows how to incorporate the correlation between successive nuclear jumps, which are well known to play a role in defect mechanisms of self-diffusion in crystals, into the calculation of the correlation functions describing the temperature dependence of the nuclear spin relaxation in solids. The treatment is based on an extension of Torrey’s theory of nuclear spin relaxation by randomly migrating nuclei. Explicit and detailed results are given for the monovacancy mechanisms of self-diffusion in an isotopically pure face-centred cubic crystal.