SPECTRAL ANALYSIS OF GRAVITY AND MAGNETIC ANOMALIES DUE TO TWO‐DIMENSIONAL STRUCTURES

Abstract

The expressions for the spectra of both gravity and magnetic anomalies due to a two‐dimensional structure consist of (except for a factor) sums of exponentials. The exponents of these exponentials are functions of frequency and the locations of the corners of the polygonal cross‐section of the structure. Two computationally feasible methods for determining the exponents from a given spectrum are described in this paper; they are essentially based on the generation of a system of linear equations. The unknown coefficients in this system of equations are functions of the corner locations. The first method requires expansion of the exponentials in the expressions for the spectra in the form of a series and works reliably when the amplitudes of low frequencies are analyzed. The unknown parameters are determined fairly accurately with this method by suitable combinations of the spectra of the observed anomaly and its moments. The second method utilizes an exponential approximation technique for producing the system of linear equations. If only the spectrum of the anomaly is used, the system of equations becomes ill‐conditioned in most cases resulting in grossly inaccurate solutions. However, particular combinations of the spectra of the anomaly and its first and second order moments are found to improve significantly the behavior of the system of equations and thus the quality of results. It has also been found that the mean values of corner locations can be calculated fairly accurately by taking the ratios of the spectra of the anomaly and its moments. Once the corner locations are found, computation of the density contrast in the case of a gravity anomaly and the magnetization contrast for a magnetic anomaly is straightforward.