Anisotropy of out-of-phase magnetic susceptibility: an approach for magnetic subfabrics determination

The Anisotropy of Magnetic Susceptibility (AMS) represents the contribution of all minerals in rock samples (paramagnetic, diamagnetic, and/or ferromagnetic minerals). An intermediate AMS tensor may be recorded in rocks where a composite fabric is present, due to the presence of both paramagnetic and ferromagnetic minerals, being possible to be resolved into two distinct subfabrics using techniques as out-of-phase AMS (opAMS). The magnetic susceptibility measured in alternating field can be resolved into in-phase and out-of-phase components. In-phase AMS (ipAMS) measures the bulk response of all minerals in a sample however, opAMS is only sensitive to selected ferromagnetic minerals such as hematite, titanomagnetite, and ultrafine magnetite. The opAMS can be harnessed as a tool for direct determination of magnetic subfabrics defined by ferromagnetic minerals. This work focuses on three Portuguese plutons: Lamas de Olo, Lavadores-Madalena, and Santa Eulália. The preliminary results show that magnetic susceptibility is lower in opAMS, the degree of magnetic anisotropy is much higher in opAMS and the ellipsoid shape parameter has no significant differences in opAMS or ipAMS. The ipAMS and opAMS tensors are in general coaxial, pointing out that standard AMS fabric is parallel to the subfabric of minerals like hematite, titanomagnetite, and ultrafine magnetite. Two sites from Lamas de Olo Pluton with low in-phase magnetic susceptibility (ipK_m) values were also measured, showing two different scenarios: (i) the coaxially is present in one site, pointing out the presence of minerals like hematite (after magnetite) but with the same orientation as the matrix; (ii) different orientation of K₁ and K₃ in ipAMS and opAMS suggesting the presence of a ferromagnetic oxide like hematite (after magnetite) but with a different orientation from the paramagnetic minerals. Nevertheless, it should be noted that in samples with low K_m values, the presence of ferromagnetic minerals is scarce (or absent) and the opAMS has minor accuracy (the associated error is greater). The opAMS findings attain similar results to the anisotropy of anhysteretic remanent magnetization (AARM) studies, once both are related to the presence of ferromagnetic minerals, and their magnetic properties. However, the opAMS does not require the permanent magnetization of samples and is measured simultaneously with the ipAMS. With further works, a larger number of samples will be measured to accomplish more information, and AARM measurements will be performed on the same samples to compare the ipAMS, opAMS, and AARM tensors.

Acknowledgements: This work was funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) under UIDB/04683/2020 project.