Bleaching of the thermoluminescence of feldspars by selected wavelengths present in sunlight

Abstract

Feldspars occur in many sediments, and dating them by thermoluminescence (TL) requires a knowledge of how efficiently sunlight bleaches these minerals. The relative bleaching efficiencies of various wavelengths have been investigated for four alkali feldspars and an oligoclase, using the natural TL of the samples and the artificial TL induced by laboratory irradiation, bleached by wavelengths in the range 322–350 nm. Ultraviolet wavelengths are more efficient than the longer wavelengths at bleaching all the glow-curve peaks and are responsible for most of the phototransfer from high-temperature peaks to low-temperature peaks. Some feldspars show an initial increase in TL intensity with bleaching. Two sanidines of similar bulk composition but different TL glow curves different dependences on bleaching wavelength. In a sodic sanidine with a dominant 240°C peak the energy required to bleach to 50% was a thousand times greater at 550 nm than at 322 nm. In contrast, another sanidine with a complex glow curve between 150 and 450°C showed a much slower change in the 330°C peak with wavelength—a factor of 10 between 322 and 550 nm—with a region between 400 and 500 nm which was almost independent of wavelength. This behaviour is explained by competing mechanisms of phototransfer and bleaching which depend on wavelength in different ways.