Calculating orientation distributions in magnetic tapes

Two new methods are presented for determining the orientation distribution of magnetic tapes from measurements of the angular dependence of remanence. A closed-form expression is presented which allows a two-dimensional distribution function to be directly calculated from the remanence measurements. We have also adapted the method of maximum entropy to numerically calculate the distribution function. This method selects a distribution function which maximizes the entropy subject to the constraint that the fit cannot be better than the assumed error in the measurements. Results are presented which show very good agreement between the two methods.