Interpreting magnetic data by integral moments

The use of the integral moments for interpreting magnetic data is based on a very elegant property of potential fields, but in the past it has not been completely exploited due to problems concerning real data. We describe a new 3-D development of previous 2-D results aimed at determining the magnetization direction, extending the calculation to second-order moments to recover the centre of mass of the magnetization distribution. The method is enhanced to reduce the effects of the regional field that often alters the first-order solutions. Moreover, we introduce an iterative correction to properly assess the errors coming from finite-size surveys or interaction with neighbouring anomalies, which are the most important causes of the failing of the method for real data. We test the method on some synthetic examples, and finally, we show the results obtained by analysing the aeromagnetic anomaly of the Monte Vulture volcano in Southern Italy.     

Review of the low-temperature magnetic properties of magnetite from a rock magnetic perspective

The low-temperature magnetic properties of magnetite are reviewed, and implications for rock magnetism considered. The behaviour of fundamental properties of magnetite at low temperatures near the Verwey transition ( T _v ) are documented, and attention is given to various Verwey transition theories. The low-temperature behaviour of the magnetic energies that control domain structure is reviewed in detail. For the first time in rock magnetic literature, the low-temperature anomaly in spontaneous magnetization ( M _s ) is documented and the differences between the saturation magnetization and M _s near the Verwey transition are discussed. It is argued that the low-temperature behaviour of the magnetocrystalline anisotropy, and in particular the anomaly at T _v , is most likely to affect multidomain remanence during low-temperature cycling. For multidomain crystals it is calculated that the large increase in magnetocrystalline anisotropy intensity and reduction in symmetry on cooling through T _v is likely to reduce the stability of closure domains.