Experimental and modelling study of pulsed optically stimulated luminescence in quartz, marble and beta irradiated salt

Abstract

Optical stimulation luminescence (OSL) signals can be obtained using continuous-wave optical stimulation (CW-OSL), the linear modulation optical stimulation method (LM-OSL) and the time-resolved optical stimulation (TR-OSL) method. During TR-OSL measurements, the stimulation and emission of luminescence are experimentally separated in time by using short light pulses. This paper presents new TR-OSL data for annealed high purity synthetic quartz, for marble and for commercially available iodized salt. A new type of behaviour for TR-OSL signals for quartz and iodized salt is presented, in which the OSL signal exhibits a nonmonotonic behaviour during optical stimulation; this type of behaviour has not been reported previously in the literature for quartz. Furthermore, a luminescence component with very long luminescence lifetime is reported for some quartz aliquots, which may be due to the presence of a delayed-OSL (DOSL) mechanism in quartz. A new kinetic model for TR-OSL in quartz is presented, which is based on a main electron trap and on several luminescence centres. The model is used to quantitatively fit several sets of experimental data of pulsed optically stimulated luminescence from quartz.