Influence of magnetic interactions on the anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility: the case of single domain particles packed in globule aggregates

Abstract

The influence of magnetic interactions on the anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility (AMS) have been largely studied by several theoretical models or experiments. Numerical models have shown that when magnetostatic interactions occur, the distributions of particles over the volume rather than their individual orientations control the AMS. We have shown recently from a comprehensive rock magnetic study and from a theoretical 2-dimensional (2-D) model that single domain particles closely packed in globule aggregates could produce strong local random interaction magnetic fields which could influence the magnetic susceptibility and decrease the degree of anisotropy. In this paper, we first present in detail this 2-D theoretical model and then we extend it to the 3-D case. The possible distribution function of the magnetostatic interaction fields comprises two extreme states: it is either isotropic or ordered. The former case corresponds to the thermal-demagnetized state while the second case corresponds to the alternating field (AF) demagnetized state. We show that when easy axes of magnetization are not uniformly distributed, the degree of anisotropy decreases as the interaction field increases in both AF- and thermal-demagnetized states in 2-D and 3-D geometry. Thus we conclude that random magnetic fields generated by a random arrangement of magnetic particles over the sample volume decrease the degree of anisotropy of AMS and may alter the magnetic fabric.