SORDOR pulses: expansion of the Böhlen–Bodenhausen scheme for low-power broadband magnetic resonance

Abstract

A novel type of efficient broadband pulse, called second-order phase dispersion by optimised rotation (SORDOR), has recently been introduced. In contrast to adiabatic excitation, SORDOR-90 pulses provide effective transverse 90∘ rotations throughout their bandwidth, with a quadratic offset dependence of the phase in the x,y plane. Together with phase-matched SORDOR-180 pulses, this enables the Böhlen–Bodenhausen broadband refocusing approach for linearly frequency-swept pulses to be extended to any type of 90∘/180∘ pulse–delay sequence. Example pulse shapes are characterised in theory and experiment, and an example application is given with a 19F-PROJECT experiment for measuring relaxation times with reduced distortions due to J-coupling evolution.