Muon spin rotation with pulsed sources: Fundamental and application-oriented aspects of synchronous pulsed magnetic fields

Abstracts

In a pulsed polarized source of muons, such as the ISIS Facility at the Rutherford Laboratory (UK), external fields with a duration as short as a few muon’s life-times (typically 20 μs) and synchronous to the muon pulse can be applied. Here we present a muon spin rotation (μSR) study in which an external pulsed magnetic field and/or field gradient, generated by a laminar current-loop method, are applied to investigate new properties. Field gradients are exploited for directly imaging the implantation depth distribution of positive muons in metals. Pulsed uniform magnetic fields are shown suitable for the direct measurement of the sudden-to-adiabatic crossover and, when appropriately delayed with respect to the muon pulse, are expected to be crucial for the experimental study of the delayed muonium formation.