Understanding Radiation Damping in a Simple Way

A simple picture is provided about various radiation-damping effects in NMR, as follows: free-induction decay can grow before it decays; signal intensity shows a sawtooth profile as a function of the pulse flip angle; a twisted signal phase can appear when the pulse flip angle is greater than 90°; spin - lattice relaxation times cannot be measured by the routine inversion - recovery method, and spin - spin relaxation times cannot be estimated by the simple spin - echo method; a z gradient pulse sometimes fails to suppress radiation damping; and in two-dimensional experiments there can be strong harmonic peaks in the indirectly detected dimension. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Concepts Magn Reson 9: 173–187, 1997