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2
Muon
Spectroscopy
An Introduction
St e p h e n J. B lu n d e l l
R o b e rto D e R e n z i
To m L a n c a st e r
F r a n c i s L . P r at t
Muon Spectroscopy - An Introduction
Muon Spectroscopy - An Introduction
Edited by
Stephen J. Blundell
University of Oxford
Roberto De Renzi
University of Parma
Tom Lancaster
University of Durham
Francis L. Pratt
ISIS Neutron and Muon Source
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
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Preface
2 Introduction 10
2.1 Discovery of the muon 10
2.2 The first muon application 11
2.3 Muon perspectives 12
2.4 The µSR experiment 17
Exercises 20
5 Polarization functions 54
5.1 Static fields 55
5.2 Dynamical fields 60
5.3 Disordered systems 64
5.4 The stretched exponential 65
Exercises 67
x Contents
9 Superconductors 130
9.1 The discovery 130
9.2 London penetration depth 131
9.3 Ginzburg-Landau model 134
9.4 Type-II superconductors 136
9.5 Measuring the penetration depth 140
9.6 The microscopic model 144
9.7 Example materials 146
9.8 Clean versus dirty 150
9.9 The Uemura plot 151
9.10 Spontaneous fields 154
Exercises 155
12 Chemistry 177
12.1 Chemical environments 177
12.2 Muonium spectroscopy 180
12.3 Reactions of muonium 183
12.4 Muoniated radicals 186
12.5 Structure and dynamics 191
Exercises 198
14 Instrumentation 210
14.1 Spectrometer elements 210
14.2 Pulsed sources 213
14.3 Continuous sources 214
14.4 Small samples 215
Exercises 261
Index 406
The basics of µSR 1
This is a book about a set of closely related experiments that use muons
1.1 The key idea 1
to investigate matter. They are known as µSR, which stands for muon-
1.2 The principles of the experi-
spin relaxation, rotation, or resonance. ment 2
1.3 Muon beams and spectrome-
ters 4
1.1 The key idea 1.4 Experimental geometries 6
1.5 What can we do with µSR? 6
The muon is a radioactive particle with a magnetic moment and it Chapter summary 7
can be implanted into a sample.
We will now unpack the various parts of this sentence in more detail. 1
Real experiments work with either one
muon at a time, or a pulse of 102 –103
(a) The muon is a radioactive particle
muons at a time. Therefore, accumu-
lating 2 × 107 total counts might take
The muon is radioactive and so it does not last very long. It has an ≈ 1 hour, though the time depends a lot
average lifetime of τµ = 2.2 µs, after which it decays into other particles. on the beamline and the experiment, as
The special nature of the particle’s decay allows us to read out the we will discuss in due course.
information that the muon probes.
N (t)/N (0)
Example 1.1
The radioactive decay of the muon means that the number of muons n(t) in the
sample a time t after implantation follows the equation
This means that if you were able to implant twenty million muons [n(0) = 2 × 107 ] t (µs)
into the sample at t = 0 (a number of muons which is not uncommon1 in a µSR
experiment), the number remaining at t = 20 µs, is 20 × 106 × e−20/2.2 which is over
Fig. 1.1 The total counts as a func-
22,000. So even though the muon decay time is 2.2 µs, you can measure muons that
tion of time from a µSR experiment,
live a lot longer than that.
illustrating the exponential decay pre-
Note also that the number of muons N (t) dt that decay between t and t + dt is
dicted from eqn 1.2.
given by
dn(t) n(0) −t/τµ 2
N (t) = − = e = N (0) e−t/τµ , (1.2) This is because positive muons are of-
dt τ
ten more effective for investigating the
and N (t) is the quantity that is recorded in a µSR experiment (see Fig. 1.1). collective behaviour of matter, com-
pared to negative muons which, owing
to their resemblance to electrons, are
more useful in investigating the chem-
The muon is a subatomic particle and it can be positively or neg- ical elements in a material. However,
atively charged. We usually employ positively charged muons in µSR negatively charged muons are also used
measurements.2 (see Chapter 22).
2 The basics of µSR
where B is the magnitude of the field at the muon site. Equation 1.3 is
arguably the most important one in this book.
θ
Sµ
Example 1.2
Fig. 1.2 In a magnetic field B the Calculate the precession frequency for a muon in (a) the Earth’s magnetic field (≈
muon spin S µ precesses around the 50 µT), (b) 2 mT, the magnetic field commonly used to calibrate a µSR experiment,5
field on a cone at an angular frequency and (c) 5 T, a relatively high magnetic field.
of ω = γµ B. Solution: We use the formula for precession frequency ν
ω γµ B
ν= = , (1.4)
5
Many facilities use old-fashioned cgs 2π 2π
and obtain (a) 6.8 kHz, (b) 0.27 MHz, and (c) 0.68 GHz. For experimental purposes,
units, and 2 mT translates to 20 G
it is often more useful to write the expressions in terms of frequency (ν) units, rather
(i.e. 20 Gauss, where 104 G = 1 T).
than angular frequency (ω) units, although, as we will see later, it is often more
Such a calibration is often known as a
convenient in theoretical work to use angular frequency.
‘T20’, which means a transverse field
As we have seen, a typical µSR experiment might measure times up to around 20 µs
of twenty Gauss. For more details on
after muon implantation. Precession in the Earth’s magnetic field [which would have
these units, see Appendix A.
a period of 1/(6.8 kHz) ≈ 150 µs] is therefore too slow to measure directly and one
would just observe the very beginning of a precession signal. On the other hand,
a 5 T field produces very fast precession, and to measure this one would need very
6
It is possible to do this though – see good timing resolution.6
Chapter 20.
1.2 The principles of the experiment 3
NF (t) − NB (t)
P (t) ∝ . (1.6)
NF (t) + NB (t)
The polarization in this case is proportional to a cosine function P (t) ∝ cos γµ Bt,
which is simply the circular precessing motion projected along the z direction. If we
did not know the magnitude of the magnetic field we applied, we could measure it
very accurately from the frequency of the oscillations in P (t). An example of some
data showing this effect can be seen in Fig. 1.4. t (µs)
Example 1.4
In a muon facility, a beam of protons is fired into a target and this makes pions. The
experiment is usually carried out using pions which are at rest in the surface of the
target and which decay quickly into muons via the reaction
π + → µ+ + νµ . (1.7)
Since this reaction must conserve linear and angular momentum, and since the pion
is initially at rest and has no spin or orbital angular momentum, we deduce that
both the muon (µ+ ) and the neutrino (νµ ) must have opposite linear and angular
momenta. Having opposite linear momenta just means the two particles head off in
opposite direction. Because neutrinos always have a negative helicity (i.e. their spin
is always observed to be antiparallel to their momentum) then the muon must also
have negative helicity (so that its spin is also antiparallel to its momentum). For this
reason, we are able to obtain a beam of fully spin-polarized muons.
cryostat
of cables and other paths for electrical signals have to be adjusted very
carefully. A very simple schematic of the experiment, showing the main
features of the spectrometer, is shown in Fig. 1.5 (we will discuss many
more details of the experimental arrangement in Chapters 14 and 15).
Example 1.5
An example of a real muon spectrometer is the HiFi instrument at ISIS, as shown
in Fig. 1.6 and Fig. 1.7. The sample is placed in a cryostat at the centre of the
spectrometer, where it stops muons from the particle beam. The sample is surrounded
by positron detectors, each of which consists of a piece of scintillator material linked
optically through a plastic light guide to a photomultiplier.
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