Anisotropy of p states and 11B nuclear spin-lattice relaxation in (Mg,Al)B2

We calculated the nuclear spin-lattice relaxation rate in the (Mg,Al)B2 system and found that the orbital relaxation mechanism dominates over the dipolar and Fermi-contact mechanisms in MgB2, whereas in AlB2 due to a smaller density of states and strong anisotropy of boron p orbitals the relaxation is completely determined by Fermi-contact interaction. The results for MgB2 are compared with existing experimental data, whereas our results for the doped alloy and AlB2 can be used in future experiments to verify the theoretical predictions about the electronic structure of this system.