Potential fields and their partial derivatives produced by a 2D homogeneous polygonal source: A summary with some revisions

Abstract

We summarized and revised the present forward modeling methods for calculating the gravity- and magnetic-field components and their partial derivatives of a 2D homogeneous source with a polygonal cross section. The responses of interest include the gravity-field components and their first- and second-order partial derivatives and the magnetic-field components and their first-order partial derivatives. The revised formulas consist of several basic quantities that are common in all the formulations. A singularity appears when the observation point coincides with a polygon vertex. This singularity is removable for the gravity formulas but not for the others. The compact forms of the revised formulas make them easy to implement. We compare the gravity- and magnetic-field components and their partial derivatives produced by a 2D prism whose polygonal cross section approximates a cylinder with the corresponding analytical fields and partial derivatives of the cylinder. The perfect fittings presented by both data sets confirm the reliability of the updated formulas.