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Estimating particle size and coercivity distributions of pigmentary hematite in red chert with thermal fluctuation tomography
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  • Pengxiang Hu,
  • Xiang Zhao,
  • David Heslop,
  • Hirokuni Oda,
  • Andrew P. Roberts
Pengxiang Hu
Australian National University

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Xiang Zhao
Australian National University
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David Heslop
Research School of Earth Sciences
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Hirokuni Oda
Geological Survey of Japan, AIST
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Andrew P. Roberts
Australian National University
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Abstract

Pigmentary hematite carries important signals in paleomagnetic and paleoenvironmental studies. However, weak magnetism and the assumption that it has high magnetic coercivity prevents prevents routine identification of the size distribution of pigmentary hematite, especially for fine particle sizes. We present a strategy for estimating joint hematite particle volume and microcoercivity (f (V, Hk0)) distributions from low-temperature demagnetization curves and thermal fluctuation tomography (TFT) of pigmentary hematite in bulk samples of Triassic-Jurassic Inuyama red chert, Japan. The coercivity of the pigmentary hematite increases exponentially with decreasing temperature, following a modified Kneller’s law, where microcoercivity has a wide but approximately symmetric distribution in logarithmic space from ~1 tesla to tens of tesla. All of the red chert samples contain stable single domain (SSD) hematite with 35 - 160 nm diameter; a significant superparamagnetic (SP) hematite population with sizes down to several nanometers also occurs in Jurassic samples. The SP/SSD threshold size is estimated to be 8 - 18 nm in these samples. The fine particle size of the pigmentary hematite is evident in its low median unblocking temperature (194 °C to 529 °C) and, thus, this hematite may contribute to all four paleomagnetic components identified in published thermal magnetization studies of the Inuyama red chert. In this work, uniaxial anisotropy and magnetization switching via coherent rotation are assumed. Uniaxial anisotropy is often dominant in fine-grained hematite, although the dominant anisotropy type should be evaluated before using TFT. This approach is applicable to studies that require knowledge of coercivity and size distributions of hematite pigments.