Abstract. Homonuclear decoupling sequences in solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) under
magic-angle spinning (MAS) show experimentally significantly larger residual
line width than expected from Floquet theory to second order. We present an
in-depth theoretical and experimental analysis of the origin of the residual
line width under decoupling
based on frequency-switched Lee–Goldburg (FSLG) sequences. We analyze the effect of experimental pulse-shape errors (e.g., pulse
transients and B1-field inhomogeneities) and use a Floquet-theory-based
description of higher-order error terms that arise from the interference
between the MAS rotation and the pulse sequence. It is shown that the
magnitude of the third-order auto term of a single homo- or heteronuclear
coupled spin pair is important and leads to significant line broadening
under FSLG decoupling. Furthermore, we show the dependence of these
third-order error terms on the angle of the effective field with the
B0 field. An analysis of second-order cross terms is presented that
shows that the influence of three-spin terms is small since they are
averaged by the pulse sequence. The importance of the inhomogeneity of the radio-frequency (rf) field
is discussed and shown to be the main source of residual line broadening
while pulse transients do not seem to play an important role.
Experimentally, the influence of the combination of these error terms is
shown by using restricted samples and pulse-transient compensation. The
results show that all terms are additive but the major contribution to the
residual line width comes from the rf-field inhomogeneity for the standard
implementation of FSLG sequences, which is significant even for samples with
a restricted volume.