Suppression of ghost distances in multiple-spin double electron-electron resonance

Distance measurements by pulse electron paramagnetic resonance techniques are increasingly applied to multiple-spin systems. In the double electron-electron resonance experiment, more than two dipolar coupled spins manifest in an increased total modulation depth and in sum and difference dipolar frequency contributions that give rise to additional peaks appearing in the distance distribution, which do not correspond to the real interspin distances of the system and are hence referred to as ghost contributions. These ghost contributions may be so prominent that they might be mistaken for real distance peaks or that real distance peaks shift their position or disappear. We present a simple approximate procedure to suppress ghost distances to a great extent by manipulating the experimentally obtained form factor during data analysis by a simple power scaling with a scaling exponent zeta(N) = 1/(1-N), with N being the number of coupled spins in the system. This approach requires neither further experimental effort nor exact knowledge about labelling and inversion efficiency. This should enable routine application to biological systems. The approach is validated on simulated test cases for up to five spins and applied to synthetic model samples. The suppression of ghost distances with the presented approach works best for symmetric geometries and rigid molecules which, at the same time, are the cases where ghost contributions are most disturbing. The distance distributions obtained by power scaling are consistent with distributions that were obtained with previously obtained alternative approaches and agree, in some cases, strikingly well with the expectations for the true interspin distance distributions.