IRMITS: A MATLAB program for analyzing isothermal remanent magnetization (IRM) data

Isothermal Remanent Magnetization (IRM) is a method used to observe the magnetization of materials by applying DC magnetic field at a constant temperature. The observed value of magnetization is used to distinguish the magnetic minerals contained in samples e.g., rocks, sediments, soils. This paper proposes IRMITS, a novel MATLAB program for analyzing the acquired IRM data set. This program uses several integrated approaches to analyze each mineral called Linear Acquisition Plot (LAP), Gradient of Acquisition Plot (GAP), and Standardised Acquisition Plot (SAP). In order to be able to analyze the data on a broader range, we provide LAP, GAP, and SAP on semilog axes. The x-axis represents the applied magnetic field on a logarithmic scale, while the y-axis illustrates linear-scaled IRM value. The LAP values normalize IRM values, which is done automatically by this program. The GAP values are obtained through the differentiation of the normalized IRM values. SAP values are found by converting the normalized IRM values into z-score values and probability distribution. Then the generated values of those functions are plotted to get the curves that could be interpreted. Plots from LAP, GAP, and SAP can complement each other in the analysis process. After plotting the results and analyzing the trends of the graphs, different minerals can be distinguished. This is possible because different trends represent different minerals. For further research, analyzed data from this paper could be used to determine the saturation point of minerals and discover different types of composing minerals. Our program can also be used as a quick look to be validated in the future with other methods such as X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) analysis.