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From Disorder to Order: Inheritance of Magnetic Remanence in Tetrataenite-Bearing Meteorites From Multi-Phase Micromagnetic Modeling
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  • José Augusto Devienne,
  • Thomas Andreas Berndt,
  • Wyn Williams,
  • Shichu Chen
José Augusto Devienne
Peking University

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Thomas Andreas Berndt
Peking University
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Wyn Williams
University of Edinburgh
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Shichu Chen
Peking University
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Abstract

Iron meteorites are believed to be fragments of mantle-stripped planetary cores ejected during catastrophic collisions. They are, therefore, a unique class of material, as they constitute the only available samples from planetary cores. An increasing amount of evidence suggests that the tetrataenite-bearing cloudy zones (CZ) in iron and stony-iron meteorites can preserve magnetic records of ancient magnetic activity of their parent bodies over solar system timescales. Tetrataenite islands in the CZ are nanometer-sized ($<$ 200 nm) crystals that form through ordering from precursor taenite islands upon extremely slow cooling through 320 \textsuperscript{o}C. Recent micromagnetic models have shown that such precursor taenite islands form highly thermally stable single-domain (SD) or single-vortex states (SV). In this work we employ a 3D finite-element multi-phase micromagnetic modeling to show that tetratenite inherits the magnetic remanence of taenite precursor when it forms over underlying SD states. When taenite form SV states, nevertheless, tetrataenite reset the precursor magnetization and record a new remanence through chemical ordering at 320 \textsuperscript{o}C. We further assess the thermal stability of tetrataenite islands. We show that in cases where tetrataenite inherits the domain states of its precursor taenite, the origin of the remanence is in fact 10\textsuperscript{5} years older than in cases where tetrataenite resets the precursor SV magnetization, corresponding to records of two very different stages of planetary formation.
23 Dec 2023Submitted to ESS Open Archive
27 Dec 2023Published in ESS Open Archive