Abstract
Frequency-dependent magnetic susceptibility enables the amount of newly created ultrafine superparamagnetic particles to be assessed, being therefore important tool for environmental and palaeoclimatologic research. It was shown recently that the out-of-phase susceptibility is also able to provide this information.
In the present paper we investigate the accuracy of the measurement of the out-of-phase susceptibility at all three frequencies of the MFK1-FA Kappabridge as well as accuracy in the determination of the X-ON parameter, which is the microscopic equivalent of the X-FN parameter characterizing the frequency-dependent susceptibility. The method is tested on samples of cave sediments, a loess/palaeosoil sequence, and artificial specimens.
The detection limit in determining the X-ON parameter is about 3%, which is only slightly worse than the reproducibility of the X-FN parameter (about 1%). A new measuring technique is proposed making the accuracy in determination of the X-ON parameter comparable to that in determining X-FN parameter.
The main advantage of the out-of-phase susceptibility is that it is measured simultaneously with the in-phase susceptibility during one measuring process. This is very useful in working with large specimen collections as in palaeoclimatology and environmental magnetism.