Elizabeth R. Jenista1, Rosa T. Branca1, Debadeep Bhattacharyya2, Xin Chen1, Warren S. Warren1
1Department of Chemistry, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA; 2Oxford Instruments, Concord, MA, USA
Magnetic resonance is limited as a molecular imaging modality by its poor sensitivity, due to the small fractional magnetization achieved in even large magnets. Hyperpolarization methods have been demonstrated to increase this sensitivity by orders of magnitude, but the enhanced signal relaxes away in tens of seconds in favorable cases, making many imaging applications problematic. We show theoretically and experimentally that symmetry protected, true singlet states can be used to store and retrieve population in very long lived states, extending the utility of hyperpolarization techniques.