Novel ways of probing local spin environments in complex materials*

Characterizing nuclear quadrupole interactions presents a valuable method to describe the symmetry of local spin environments because the interaction imprints this information onto the dynamics of the spins. In traditional magnetic resonance, this information is encoded into the spectrum of the nuclear spins but can potentially be obscured by mutiple sources of spectral broadening. Here, we compare the use of coherent spins states and traditional thermal states as initial states for the experiment, and explore how quadrupolar interactions are encoded into the respective dynamics. It is known that coherent spin states evolve into spin-squeezed states under the quadrupolar interaction. We also compare how different sources of spectral broadening influence the observed dynamics. We compare how different sources of spectral broadening influence the observed dynamics with implications for the observation and manipulation of correlated magnetic phases.