Role of Hall Effect in Magnetotelluric Sounding

Many minerals belong to the semiconductor class from the point of view of the mechanism of electrical conductivity. One of the experimental methods for determining the electrical conductivity of semiconductor minerals is based on the Hall effect. Due to the presence of the Earth's magnetic field it is possible to expect the manifestation of this effect in natural conditions during electromagnetic soundings. To detect manifestations of the Hall effect during magnetotelluric (MT) sounding, a polarization analysis method is proposed, based on a data processing algorithm that divides the time spectrum of theMTfield into normalmode spectra with right and left circular polarization. Numerical estimates and results of a special field experiment are presented.