High-coercivity magnetic minerals in archaeological baked clay and bricks

SUMMARY The thorough understanding of magnetic mineralogy is a prerequisite of any successful palaeomagnetic or archaeomagnetic study. Magnetic minerals in archaeological ceramics and baked clay may be inherited from the parent material or, more frequently, formed during the firing process. The resulting magnetic mineralogy may be complex, including ferrimagnetic phases not commonly encountered in rocks. Towards this end, we carried out a detailed rock magnetic study on a representative collection of archaeological ceramics (baked clay from combustion structures and bricks) from Bulgaria and Russia. Experiments included measurement of isothermal remanence acquisition and demagnetization as a function of temperature between 20 and >600 °C. For selected samples, low-temperature measurements of saturation remanence and initial magnetic susceptibility between 1.8 and 300 K have been carried out. All studied samples contain a magnetically soft mineral identified as maghemite probably substituted by Ti, Mn and/or Al. Stoichiometric magnetite has never been observed, as evidenced by the absence of the Verwey phase transition. In addition, one or two magnetically hard mineral phases have been detected, differing sharply in their respective unblocking temperatures. One of these unblocking between 540 and 620 °C is believed to be substituted hematite. Another phase unblocks at much lower temperatures, between 140 and 240 °C, and its magnetic properties correspond to an enigmatic high coercivity, stable, low-unblocking temperature (HCSLT) phase reported earlier. In a few samples, high- and low unblocking temperature, magnetically hard phases appear to coexist; in the others, the HCSLT phase is the only magnetically hard mineral present.

Local Magnetic Anisotropy of the Co-Based Amorphous Alloy

The magnetization, initial magnetic susceptibility, and magnetostriction of a multicomponent Co-based amorphous alloy have been studied. The exchange constant a and the Curie temperature TC of the alloy are determined. On the basis of a method based on the theory of stochastic magnetic structure for amorphous ferromagnets and using the magnetization curves, the correlation field Hℓ, the field Ha, the effective constant of local magnetic anisotropy Keff, and the stochastic characteristics of local anisotropy – the mean square field fluctuations and the correlation radius – have been calculated. The temperature behavior of the examined magnetic characteristics is analyzed. The results of magnetostriction research allow a conclusion to be drawn that the local magnetic anisotropy of the alloy has a single-ion origin.

The Initial Magnetic Susceptibility of Dense Aggregated Dipolar Fluids

To correlate the dipole moment and density dependence of the initial magnetic susceptibility on the basis of the former related theories and the probability analysis of chain formation, physically based analytical correlation equation was derived. After the local magnetic field strength and the chaining probability between two particle have been determined the chain and particle distributions came from the geometric distribution. The initial magnetic susceptibility was resulted from the summation of Langevin initial susceptibility of k-length chains. Two particles were considered in a chain if the interaction energy between them was below a certain limit. By varying slightly this energy limit around 70–75 % good agreement has been obtained between the simulation and theoretical data. Monte Carlo simulations were used to calculate the initial magnetic susceptibility of dipolar hard sphere system at different dipole moments and densities.