A guide to multiple-specimen paleointensity

Complete text of publication follows. Experimental data indicate that the elegant multiple-specimen technique of Dekkers and Boehnel (2006) tends to systematically overestimate paleointensity for intermediate pseudo-single domain to multi-domain (MD) particle sizes. By analyzing the relevant properties of thermoremanence acquisition, it is possible to design an extended version of the multiple-specimen technique, which is more reliable in the critical domain state range. The improved measurement scheme regards for the fraction of demagnetized remanence, estimates the MD contribution, and corrects MD overestimates. Furthermore, it removes viscous overprints, and uses an alteration check for determining error bars on the final paleointensity result. Experimental results on synthetic samples show the effectiveness of the improved technique.