CAREER: Physics and Applications of Hyperpolarized Gases

这个职业发展计划将超极化（HP）惰性气体的创新应用与为本科物理专业学生开发的新课程——现代技术物理学相结合。通过自旋交换光泵浦（SEOP）可以在He-3和Xe-129中获得巨大的非平衡核自旋极化（约为10%），大大提高了这些原子核的核磁共振灵敏度。这些超极化惰性气体被广泛应用于物理、化学和生物医学等领域。近年来，高压气体的应用得到了大力推动，这带来了巨大的跨学科兴奋，但随之而来的是物理学中一些重要而持久的问题，这些问题必须得到解决，才能充分发挥各种应用的潜力。本研究计划整合了SEOP的基础物理研究和若干应用。研究包括使用高度极化的Xe-129进行极化转移到其他感兴趣的原子核，以及研究高度有序的自旋晶格，并详细分析确定壁表面超极化气体的弛豫机制。现代技术物理学：该项目的教育部分包括为犹他大学物理专业的学生共同开发一个新的轨道，现代技术物理学（PMT）。PMT计划的目标是高度上进心的学生，他们不会是专业的物理学家，但确实需要为职业和领导职位做准备，这将是有价值的技术，定量和分析优势。PMT课程包含许多创新的教学特色，包括模块化结构，其中重要的物理原理在现实世界的技术问题背景下进行解释和演示，以及每个模块中理论，实验和计算的整合。PMT将为新闻业、专利法和医学等职业提供极好的准备，并将刺激创造性教学和与快速变化和技术导向的工业世界的互动。

This career development program combines innovative applications of hyperpolarized (HP) noble gases with the development of a new track for undergraduate physics majors, Physics of Modern Technology. Enormous non-equilibrium nuclear-spin polarizations (of order 10%) can be achieved in He-3 and Xe-129 via spin-exchange optical pumping (SEOP), greatly enhancing the NMR sensitivity of these nuclei. These hyperpolarized (HP) noble gases are being applied to a broad range of problems in physics, chemistry, and biomedicine. The recent strong push in applications of HP gases has created tremendous cross-disciplinary excitement, but has left in its wake a number of important and persistent problems in the physics that must be addressed to realize the full potential of the various applications. This research program integrates the study of the basic physics of SEOP and several applications. Studies include the use of highly polarized Xe-129 both for polarization transfer to other nuclei of interest, and for the study of a highly ordered lattice of spins, and a detailed analysis to determine the relaxation mechanism of hyper-polarized gases at wall surfaces. Physics of Modern Technology: The educational component of the program consists of co-development of a new track for physics majors at the University of Utah, Physics of Modern Technology (PMT). The PMT program is aimed at highly motivated students who will not be professional physicists but do need preparation for careers and leadership positions in which it will be valuable to have technical, quantitative and analytic strengths. The PMT program contains a number of innovative pedagogical features, including a modular structure in which important physical principles are explained and demonstrated in the context of real-world technical problems, and the integration of theory, experiment, and computation in each module. PMT will be excellent preparation for careers such as journalism, patent law, and medicine, and it will stimulate creative teaching and interaction with the rapidly changing and technically oriented industrial world.