Surface magnetic relaxation - Relaxation to spin-aligned 3He experiments

Nuclear relaxation at the walls of experimental cells is an important lifetime limitation for polarized liquid 3He. However, maximum spin-lattice relaxation times T1 (i.e. the intrinsic values T1 bulk) can be obtained by diffusion limited relaxation or boundary limited relaxation. We present NMR measurements on liquid 3He in confined geometries, where the latter process is dominant. Coating of the walls by 2.7 layers of 4He enhances T1 and the thermal boundary resistance by almost two orders of magnitude at low temperatures