Conductive masses in a half-space Earth in the diffusive regime: fast hybrid modeling of a low-contrast ellipsoid

Electromagnetic three-component magnetic probes at diffusion frequencies are now available for use in slim mineral-exploration boreholes. When a source is operated at or below the surface of the Earth in the vicinity of a conductive orebody, these probes provide, after appropriate processing, the secondary vector magnetic field attributed to this body. Proper inversion of the resulting datasets requires as a first step a clear understanding of the electromagnetic interaction of model signals with model bodies. In this paper, the response of a conductive ellipsoid buried at shallow depth in a half-space Earth is investigate by a novel hybrid approach combining the localized nonlinear approximation and the low frequency scattering theory. The ellipsoidal shape indeed fits a large class of scatterers and yet is amenable to analytical calculations in the intricate world of ellipsoidal harmonics, while the localized nonlinear approximation is known to provide fairly accurate results at least for low contrasts of conductivity between a scattering body and its host medium. In addition, weak coupling of the body to the interface is assumed. The primary field accounts for the presence of the interface, but multiple reflection of the secondary field on this interface is neglected. After analyzing the theoretical bases of the approach, numerical simulations in several geometrical and electrical configurations illustrate how estimators of the secondary magnetic field along a nearby borehole behave with respect to a general-purpose method-of-moments (MoM) code. Perspectives of the investigation and extensions, in particular, to two-body systems, strong coupling to the interface, and high contrast cases, are discussed.