Pure absorption electron spin echo envelope modulation spectra by using the filter-diagonalization method for harmonic inversion.

Harmonic inversion of electron spin echo envelope (ESEEM) time-domain signals by filter diagonalization is investigated as an alternative to Fourier transformation. It is demonstrated that this method features enhanced resolution compared to Fourier-transform magnitude spectra, since it can eliminate dispersive contributions to the line shape, even if no linear phase correction is possible. Furthermore, instrumental artifacts can be easily removed from the spectra if they are narrow either in time or frequency domain. This applies to echo crossings that are only incompletely eliminated by phase cycling and to spurious spectrometer frequencies, respectively. The method is computationally efficient and numerically stable and does not require extensive parameter adjustments or advance knowledge of the number of spectral lines. Experiments on gamma-irradiated methyl-alpha-d-glucopyranoside show that more information can be obtained from typical ESEEM time-domain signals by filter-diagonalization than by Fourier transformation.