CALCULATING ORIENTATION DISTRIBUTIONS IN MAGNETIC TAPES

Two new methods are presented for determining the orientation distribu tion of magnetic tapes from measurements of the angular dependence of remanence. A closed-form expression is presented which allows a two-di mensional distribution function to be directly calculated from the rem anence measurements. We have also adapted the method of maximum entrop y to numerically calculate the distribution function. This method sele cts a distribution function which maximizes the entropy subject to the constraint that the fit cannot be better than the assumed error in th e measurements. Results are presented which show very good agreement b etween the two methods. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.