A first-order statistical exploration of the mathematical limits of
Micromagnetic Tomography
Abstract
The recently developed Micromagnetic Tomography (MMT) technique combines
advances in high resolution scanning magnetometry and micro X-ray
computed tomography. This allows precise recovery of magnetic moments of
individual magnetic grains in a sample using a least-squares inversion
approach. Here we investigate five factors, which are governing the
mathematical validity of MMT solutions: grain concentration, thickness
of the sample, size of the sample’s surface, noise level in the magnetic
scan, and sampling interval of the magnetic scan. To compute the
influence of these parameters, we set up series of numerical models in
which we assign dipole magnetizations to randomly placed grains. Then we
assess how well their magnetizations are resolved as function of these
parameters. We expanded the MMT inversion to also produce the covariance
and standard deviations of the solutions, and use these to define a
statistical uncertainty ratio and signal strength ratio for each
solution. We show that the magnetic moments of a majority of grains
under the inspected conditions are solved with very small uncertainties.
However, increasing the grain density and sample thickness carry major
challenges for the MMT inversions, demonstrated by uncertainties larger
than 100% for some grains. Fortunately, we can use the signal strength
ratio to extract grains with the most accurate solutions, even from
these challenging models. Hereby we have developed a quick and objective
routine to individually select the most reliable grains from MMT
results. This will ultimately enable determining paleodirections and
paleointensities from large subsets of grains in a sample using MMT.