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This work report the generation of high‐order Laguerre–Gaussian (LG) modes from a nanosecond, optical vortex pumped diamond Raman laser. This system is capable of generating first‐Stokes (λ1st = 1240 nm) LG modes with topological charge (ℓ) of up to 26 and second‐Stokes (λ2nd = 1485 nm) LG modes with topological charge of up to 22, when pumped using a first‐order vortex beam. The maximum first‐ and second‐Stokes LG mode energies are measured to be 0.5 and 1 mJ, respectively, when pumping with energy of 19.8 mJ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mediterranean Outflow Water (MOW) adds salt and density to open ocean intermediate waters and is therefore an important motor of Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) and climate variability. However, the variability in strength and depth of MOW on geological timescales is poorly documented. Here we present new detailed records, with excellent age control, of MOW variability from 416 ka to present from rapidly accumulated marine sediments recovered from the West Iberian Margin during Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Expedition 339. Our records of X‐ray fluorescence (XRF), physical grain size, and paleocurrent information from the anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility (AMS) indicate (i) a close relationship between the orientation of principle AMS axes and glacial‐interglacial cycles and (ii) two distinct regimes of MOW behavior over the last ~416 kyr in grain‐size and AMS variability at orbital (mainly precessional) and suborbital timescales. Between marine isotope stage (MIS) 10 and MIS 4, MOW was focused at a generally shallow depth on the West Iberian Margin, and changes in MOW strength were strongly paced by precession. A transition interval occurred during MISs 5 and 4, when MOW deepened and millennial‐scale variability in flow strength was superimposed on orbitally paced change. During MIS 11 and from MIS 3 to present, MOW was deeply focused and millennial‐scale variability dominated. We infer that late Pleistocene variability in MOW strength and depth were strongly climate influenced and that changes in circum‐Mediterranean rainfall climate were likely a primary control. Plain Language Summary: Mediterranean Outflow Water (MOW) is a salty, dense water body flowing from the Mediterranean into the North Atlantic. Today, MOW encourages North Atlantic overturning circulation and influences regional and global climate. However, changes in MOW strength and depth on geological timescales are poorly documented limiting our understanding of the relationships between climate, ocean circulation, and MOW. We analyzed magnetic properties, chemical composition, and grain size of sediment cores recovered off the Portuguese coast. We dated these archives by correlating variability in their chemical composition to a nearby site with well‐established chronology. We find two modes of variability in MOW strength and depth. Between 370 and 130 ka, MOW was located above our study site during warm intervals and was present during cold intervals. Changes in MOW strength were paced by the influence of the precession (wobble) of Earth's rotation axis on incoming solar radiation. After 130 ka, variabilities in MOW strength and depth transitioned to a shorter timescale mode of operation, in step with abrupt climate events. The sign of change in MOW strength and the pattern of change in pacing indicate that the primary forcing factor was changes in rainfall climate in and around the Mediterranean. Key Points: Variability in strength and depth of Mediterranean Outflow on the West Iberian Margin is reconstructed for the last 416 kyrPaleocurrent reconstructions reveal two regimes of Mediterranean Outflow behaviorOutflow strength and depth were likely strongly influenced by rainfall climate over the circum‐Mediterranean [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pass‐through superconducting rock magnetometers (SRMs) enable rapid and precise remanence measurement of continuous samples and are essential for paleomagnetic studies. Due to convolution effect of the SRM sensor response, pass‐through measurements need to be deconvolved to restore accurate and high‐resolution signal. A key step toward successful deconvolution is a reliable estimate of the SRM sensor response. Here, we present new tool URESPONSE for accurate SRM sensor response estimate based on measurements of a well‐calibrated magnetic point source. URESONSE allows sensor response to be estimated for continuous samples with different cross‐section geometry. We estimate sensor responses for an old liquid helium‐cooled SRM (SRM‐old) and a new liquid helium‐free SRM (SRM‐new) at the University of Southampton and compare remanence measurement of a u‐channel on both SRMs before and after deconvolution. For each SRM, sensor response estimates based on data collected using different magnetic point source samples and/or measurement procedures generally yield small differences (std. <~1%), while sensor response estimates for continuous samples with different cross‐section geometry often show larger differences (std. up to ~2%). Compared with SRM‐old, SRM‐new has smaller cross‐axis responses, less negative zones, and significantly broader main axis responses. We demonstrate that normalization of data using a nine‐element "effective length" matrix calculated from sensor response estimate is necessary to minimize differences in measurements on two SRMs. Deconvolution of measurements on two SRMs using accurate sensor response estimates yields highly consistent and high‐resolution results, while deconvolution using inaccurate sensor response data can lead to significant differences especially for data from SRM‐old that has large cross‐axis responses. Plain Language Summary: Pass‐through superconducting rock magnetometer is one of the most versatile tools for measuring magnetic signals preserved in rocks, sediments, and other materials. It allows long samples to be measured continuously at high speed and has greatly contributed to paleomagnetic and environmental magnetic studies. Data acquired on these magnetometers are smoothed and distorted because of the way the magnetometer's sensors respond to signal carried by the sample. To overcome these effects, we developed a software to estimate how the magnetometers' sensors respond to sample signal in 3‐D space. The software reads measurement data collected using a small volume sample with known stable magnetic signal and uses the data to calculate the magnetometer's response to samples with different shapes. The sensors of two different magnetometers appear to respond to signal carried by the same sample in distinct ways, and measurements of the same sample on the two magnetometers show significant differences. A simple correction using factors calculated by the software can largely reduce these differences. We also show that estimates of the magnetometer's sensor responses produced by the software can be used to restore detailed and consistent magnetic signals through inverse calculation. Key Points: We present a software for accurate estimate of magnetometer sensor response needed for reliable deconvolution of paleomagnetic measurementsNormalization using a nine‐term matrix calculated from sensor response estimate reduces discrepancies between data from two magnetometersDeconvolution restores consistent and high‐resolution data from measurements of a sample on two magnetometers with distinct sensor responses [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paleomagnetic secular variation (PSV) records serve as valuable independent stratigraphic correlation and dating tools for marine and terrestrial sediment sequences, and enhance knowledge of geomagnetic field dynamics. We present a new radiocarbon-dated record (WINPSV-12K) of Holocene geomagnetic secular variation from Windermere, updating the existing 1981 UK master PSV curve. Our analyses used continuous U-channel samples taken from the center of four sediment cores retrieved from Windermere in 2012. The natural remanent magnetization (NRM) of each U-channel was measured before and after stepwise alternating field (AF) demagnetization on a superconducting rock magnetometer at intervals of 0.5-cm or 1-cm. The NRM data reveal a stable and well-defined primary magnetization. Component declinations and inclinations estimated using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of NRM data from the four Windermere cores correlate well on their independent radiocarbon age models. The four records were stacked using a sliding window bootstrap method, resulting in a composite Holocene PSV record (WINPSV-12K). On millennial timescales WINPSV-12K correlates well with other records from Western Europe and the northern North Atlantic to a resolution of ∼1 kyr, given age uncertainties and spatial variability between records. WINPSV-12K also compares well to the CALS10k.2 and pfm9k.1a model predictions for Windermere. Key regionally-significant PSV inclination features of WINPSV-12K which correlate with other North Atlantic records include peaks at 5–6, 8.5, and 10 cal ka BP, and a trough at 7 cal ka BP. Key PSV declination features include the eastward swing from 5.5–2.3 cal ka BP followed by a major westward excursion at 2.3 cal ka BP, peaks at 1.1 and 7 cal ka BP, and troughs at 5.4 and 8.2 cal ka BP, with the caveat that an estimated magnetic lock-in delay of at least 100–200 yr is present. PSV variations on 1–3 kyr timescales are interpreted to represent strengthening and weakening of the North American versus the Siberian and European–Mediterranean high-latitude flux lobes, based on the close similarities between the North Atlantic regional records and the antiphase existing in the East Asian Stack record and the North East Pacific inclination stack. WINPSV-12K provides a regionally-important new PSV reference curve whose prominent features may serve as stratigraphic markers for North Atlantic paleo-records. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fine-grained magnetic particles in deep-sea sediments often statistically align with the ambient magnetic field during (and shortly after) deposition and can therefore record geomagnetic reversals. Correlation of these reversals to a geomagnetic polarity time scale is an important geochronological tool that facilitates precise stratigraphic correlation and dating of geological records globally. Sediments often carry a remanence strong enough for confident identification of polarity reversals, but in some cases a low signal-to-noise ratio prevents the construction of a reliable and robust magnetostratigraphy. Here we implement a data-filtering protocol, which can be integrated with the UPmag software package, to automatically reduce the maximum angular deviation and statistically mask noisy data and outliers deemed unsuitable for magnetostratigraphic interpretation. This protocol thus extracts a clearer signal from weakly magnetized sediments recovered at Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Expedition 342 Site U1406 (Newfoundland margin, northwest Atlantic Ocean). The resulting magnetostratigraphy, in combination with shipboard and shore-based biostratigraphy, provides an age model for the study interval from IODP Site U1406 between Chrons C6Ar and C9n (∼21-27 Ma). We identify rarely observed geomagnetic directional changes within Chrons C6Br, C7r, and C7Ar, and perhaps within Subchron C8n.1n. Our magnetostratigraphy dates three intervals of unusual stratigraphic behavior within the sediment drifts at IODP Site U1406 on the Newfoundland margin. These lithostratigraphic changes are broadly concurrent with the coldest climatic phases of the middle Oligocene to early Miocene and we hypothesize that they reflect changes in bottom water circulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Orbital cycles with 100kyr and/or 41kyr periods, detected in some sedimentary normalized remanence (relative paleointensity) records by power spectral analysis or wavelet analysis, have been attributed either to orbital forcing of the geodynamo, or to lithologic contamination. In this study, local wavelet power spectra (LWPS) with significance tests have been calculated for seven relative paleointensity (RPI) records from different regions of the world. The results indicate that orbital periods (100kyr and/or 41kyr) are significant in some RPI records during certain time intervals, and are not significant in others. Time intervals where orbital periods are significant are not consistent among the RPI records, implying that orbital periods in these RPI records may not have a common origin such as orbital forcing on the geodynamo. Cross-wavelet power spectra (|XWT|) and squared wavelet coherence (WTC) between RPI records and orbital parameters further indicate that common power exists at orbital periods but is not significantly coherent, and exhibits variable phase relationships, implying that orbital periods in RPI records are not caused directly by orbital forcing. Similar analyses for RPI records and benthic oxygen isotope records from the same sites show significant coherence and constant in-phase relationships during time intervals where orbital periods were significant in the RPI records, indicating that orbital periods in the RPI records are most likely due to climatic ‘contamination’. Although common power exists at orbital periods for RPI records and their normalizers with significant coherence during certain time intervals, phase relationships imply that ‘contamination’ (at orbital periods) is not directly due to the normalizers. Orbital periods are also significant in the NRM intensity records, and ‘contamination’ in RPI records can be attributed to incomplete normalization of the NRM records. Further tests indicate that ‘contamination’ is apparently not directly related to physical properties such as density or carbonate content, or to the grain size proxy κ ARM/κ. However, WTC between RPI records and the grain size proxy ARM/IRM implies that ARM/IRM does reflect the ‘contamination’ in some RPI records. It appears that orbital periods were introduced into the NRM records (and have not been normalized when calculating RPI records) through magnetite grain size variations reflected in the ARM/IRM grain size proxy. The orbital power in ARM/IRM for some North Atlantic sites is probably derived from bottom-current velocity variations that are orbitally modulated and are related to the vigor of thermohaline circulation and the production of North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW). In the case of ODP Site 983, the orbital power in RPI appears to exhibit a shift from 41-kyr to 100-kyr period at the mid-Pleistocene climate transition (∼750ka), reinforcing the climatic origin of these orbital periods. RPI records from the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and RPI records with orbital periods eliminated by band-pass filters, are highly comparable with each other in the time domain, and are coherent and in-phase in time-frequency space, especially at non-orbital periods, indicating that ‘contamination’, although present (at orbital periods) is not debilitating to these RPI records as a global signal that is primarily of geomagnetic origin. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Fuller (Fuller, M., Geomagnetic field intensity, excursions, reversals and the 41,000-yr obliquity signal, Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 245 (2006) 605–615.) pointed out that, for 9 reversals over the last 3 Myr, reversal age has a non-random relationship to the phase of orbital obliquity. Our analysis, based on Rayleigh tests, indicates that reversals have no preferred phase distribution in the obliquity cycle at the 5% significance level over the last 3 Myr. There is, however, a statistically significant relationship (at the 5% level) between reversal age and the phase of orbital eccentricity for the last 3 Myr, although this relationship breaks down on adding just a few reversals beyond 3 Ma. Over the last 5 Myr, reversals preferentially occurred during decrease of the maximum obliquity envelope although, yet again, the relationship does not hold as additional reversals are added to the analysis, no matter which timescale is tested. The Rayleigh tests are all based on the assumption of no uncertainty in reversal/excursion age, or in orbital solutions. Monte Carlo simulations indicate that reversal/excursion ages would have to be known within 5–10 kyr to resolve a preferred phase in obliquity similar to that advocated by Fuller (Fuller, M., Geomagnetic field intensity, excursions, reversals and the 41,000-yr obliquity signal, Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 245 (2006) 605–615.) over the last 3 Myr. Reversal/excursion ages would have to be known within ~15 kyr to resolve a preferred phase in orbital eccentricity for reversals over the last 3 Myr, and within ~40 kyr for the last 25 Myr. Comparison of astrochronological reversal timescales indicates that reversal age uncertainties exceed these limits, making it unlikely that a relationship of reversal/excursion age to the phase of obliquity or eccentricity would be resolvable. In the case of the obliquity envelope, the critical levels of reversal age uncertainty (~50 kyr for 0–3 Ma, ~200 kyr for 0–5 Ma, and ~400 kyr for 0–25 Ma) are less stringent. The presence of a significant relationship between reversal age and phase of the obliquity envelope for the last 5 Myr, but not further back in time, implies either larger than expected reversal age uncertainties in pre-Pliocene polarity timescales and a link between reversal age and the obliquity envelope, or, more probably, the fortuitous occurrence of a low probability relationship over the last 5 Ma that has no mechanistic implication. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract We present new sedimentological and environmental magnetic records spanning ∼3.2–2.2 Ma, during the intensification of Northern Hemisphere glaciation, from North Atlantic Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Site U1307 on Eirik Drift. Our new datasets and their high-fidelity age control demonstrate that while inland glaciers – and potentially also at times restricted iceberg-calving margins – have likely existed on southern Greenland since at least ∼3.2 Ma, persistent and extensive iceberg-calving glacial margins were only established in this region at 2.72 Ma, ∼300 kyr later than in northeastern and eastern Greenland. Despite a dramatic increase in Greenland-sourced ice-rafted debris deposition on Eirik Drift at this time, contemporaneous changes in the bulk magnetic properties of Site U1307 sediments, and a reduction in sediment accumulation rates, suggest a decrease in the delivery of Greenland-sourced glaciofluvial silt to our study site. We attribute these changes to a shift in depositional regime from bottom-current-dominated to glacial-IRD-dominated between ∼2.9 and 2.7 Ma, in response to a change in the depth of the flow path of the Western Boundary Undercurrent relative to our study site. Highlights • New high-fidelity RPI-based age model for Site U1307. • Orbital-resolution history of Greenland IRD deposition on Eirik Drift during iNHG. • Persistent marine-terminating margins established in southern Greenland from 2.7 Ma. • Potentially ∼300 ka later than in northeastern and eastern Greenland. • Major reduction in flow speed of bottom currents bathing Site U1307 during iNHG. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Changes in surface and deep-water hydrography were inferred from variations in stable isotopes and sortable silt mean grain size, respectively, on the southern Gardar Drift in the subpolar North Atlantic. The bathymetric δ 13C gradient during the penultimate glaciation was similar to the last glaciation with high- δ 13C Glacial North Atlantic Intermediate water above ∼2000m, and low- δ 13C water derived from the Southern Ocean below. During Termination II, low-δ 13C water was present throughout the water column with minimum values at intermediate depths (∼1500–2000m) and below 3000m. This pattern continued well into the early part of the Last Interglacial (LIG) period. Sortable silt mean size at 3275m suggests that deep-water circulation on Gardar Drift was relatively weak during the earliest part of the LIG (128 to 124.5ka) when planktonic δ 18O was at a minimum, reflecting warming and/or reduced salinity. We suggest that low- δ 13C water and slow current speed on Gardar Drift during the early part of the LIG was related to increased melt water fluxes to the Nordic Seas during peak boreal summer insolation, which decreased the flux and/or density of overflow to the North Atlantic. The resumption of the typical interglacial pattern of strong, well-ventilated Iceland Scotland Overflow Water was delayed until ∼124ka. These changes may have affected Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]