Reduced apparent longitudinal relaxation times in slice-selective experiments in strong magnetic field gradients

In contrast to transverse nuclear magnetizations, longitudinal spin magnetizations are usually considered as insensitive to magnetic field gradients. While this assumption is valid for homogeneously excited samples, the apparent longitudinal spin relaxation behavior of thin magnetization slices in high magnetic fields is strongly modified by diffusion. In this contribution, we present the results of theoretical and experimental studies on this effect. Furthermore, possible applications and the impact on different types of NMR techniques using strong magnetic field gradients are discussed.