Cramer-Rao bound in detection of reversals

TL;DR

This paper applies the Cramer-Rao bound to determine the limits of detecting short magnetic reversals from anomaly profiles, highlighting that duration estimates are more accurate than location estimates.

Contribution

It introduces a method to assess the recoverability of short magnetic reversals using the Cramer-Rao bound within a simplified Vine-Matthews model.

Findings

Duration of short subchrons can be estimated with high accuracy.

Localization of the center of short subchrons is less precise.

The Cramer-Rao bound provides a theoretical limit for detection accuracy.

Abstract

We use the Cramer-Rao bound to show which short magnetic reversals can be recovered successfully from a magnetic anomaly profile. Using a simple variant of the Vine-Matthews model, we show, in particular, that errors in determining the duration of a short subchron are much smaller than errors in localizing the center of the subchron.