Effects of Hard but Finite Pi Pulses: From Uncontrolled Coherence Flow to Extreme Line-narrowing and MRI of Solids

(Color Print) This doctoral dissertation presents a detailed NMR study of the surprisingly large effects arising from the non-zero duration of strong Pi pulses in spin-1/2 dipolar solids, and the development of new technique for spin coherence control based on our understanding of the finite pulse effects.