Measurement of calcite crystallographic-preferred orientations by magnetic anisotropy and comparison to diffraction methods

Abstract

The anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility (AMS) of rocks reflects the preferred orientations of minerals. Therefore AMS is a quick and easy way to characterize rock fabrics (Hrouda 1982,Borradaile 1988); the obtained result is also called the magnetic fabric of the rock. The method has been often used to measure the orientation of ferromagnetic minerals, mainly magnetite, but in recent studies it has been increasingly used to measure textures of paramagnetic minerals as phyllosilicates (Lüneburg et al. 1999, Cifelli et al. 2004). A further application is the measurement of diamagnetic textures, especially calcite textures. Calcite is suitable for the AMS method, because it has a high magnetic anisotropy with the minimum susceptibility along the crystallographic c-axis. Therefore a preferred orientation of the c-axes, which can be induced by deformation, generates a magnetic fabric...