Analysis of Crustal Magnetisation in Cartesian Vector Harmonics

Abstract:

We present a new set of functions, Vector Cartesian Harmonics (VCH), analogous to the Vector Spherical Harmonics that we have applied recently to global models of crustal and lithospheric magnetisation. Like their spherical counterpart, the VCH form a complete, orthogonal set: planar models of magnetisation can be expanded in them. There are 3 distinct types of VCH, one representing that part of the magnetisation which generates the potential magnetic field above the surface, another the potential magnetic field below the surface, and a toroidal function that generates only a non-potential field. One function therefore describes the magnetisation detected by observations of the magnetic anomaly while the other two describe the null space of an inversion of magnetic observations for magnetisation. The formalism is therefore ideal for analysing the results of inversions for magnetic structures in plane layers such as local or regional surveys where Earth’s curvature can be ignored.

The null space is in general very large, being an arbitrary combination of a doubly-infinite set of vector functions. However, in the absence of remanence and when the inducing field is uniform the null space reduces to only 2 types of structure, uniform susceptibility (Runcorn’s Theorem) and a pattern of susceptibility induced by a uniform field, the null space is restricted to uniform magnetisation and 1D patterns of susceptibility aligned with a horizontal inducing field. Both these cases are already well known, but this analysis shows them to be the ONLY members of the null space. We also give results for familiar text-book structures to show the nature of the null space in each case. Curiously, inversion of the magnetic field from a buried dipole returns exactly half the correct magnitude plus a spurious distributed magnetisation. A more complex application is the topographic structure based on the Bishop formation in California (Fairhead and Williams, SEG exp. abstr. 25, 845, 2006).

The functions involve standard Fourier transfoms and exponential functions and is easily implemented in Python or commercial packages such as Geosoft.