title: Clustering of polarity reversals of the geomagnetic field.
abstract: Often in nature the temporal distribution of inhomogeneous stochastic point processes can be modeled as a realization of renewal Poisson processes with a variable rate. Here we investigate one of the classical examples, namely, the temporal distribution of polarity reversals of the geomagnetic field. In spite of the commonly used underlying hypothesis, we show that this process strongly departs from a Poisson statistics, the origin of this failure stemming from the presence of temporal clustering. We find that a Lévy statistics is able to reproduce paleomagnetic data, thus suggesting the presence of long-range correlations in the underlying dynamo process.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisica, Università della Calabria, Ponte P. Bucci, Cubo 31C, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy.
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Carbone
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Sorriso-Valvo
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Vecchio
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Lepreti
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Veltri
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Harabaglia
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Guerra