Direct measurement of internal magnetic fields in natural sands using scanning SQUID microscopy

NMR experiments are ideally carried out in well-controlled magnetic fields. When samples of natural porous materials are studied, the situation can be complicated if the sample itself contains magnetic components, giving rise to internal magnetic fields in the pore space that modulate the externally applied fields. If not properly accounted for, the internal fields can lead to misinterpretation of relaxation, diffusion, or imaging data. To predict the potential effect of internal fields, and develop effective mitigation strategies, it is important to develop a quantitative understanding of the magnitude and distribution of internal fields occurring in natural porous media. To develop such understanding, we employ scanning SQUID microscopy, a technique that can detect magnetic field variations very accurately at high spatial resolution (∼3 μm). We prepared samples from natural unconsolidated aquifer material, and scanned areas of about 200 × 200 μm in a very low background magnetic field of ∼2 μT. We found large amplitude variations with a magnitude of about 2 mT, across a relatively long spatial scale of about 200 μm, that are associated with a large magnetic grain (>50 μm radius) with a strong magnetic remanence. We also detected substantial variations exceeding 60 μT on small spatial scales of about ∼10 μm. We attribute these small-scale variations to very fine-grained magnetic material. Because we made our measurements at very low background field, the observed variations are not induced by the background field but due to magnetic remanence. Consequently, the observed internal fields will affect even low-field NMR experiments.