Fractional crystallization and zoning in igneous feldspars: ideal water-buffered liquid fractionation lines and feldspar zoning paths

Abstract

Diagrams giving plagioclase and sanidine fractionation paths and liquid fractionation lines under conditions of ideal water-buffered fractional crystallization in the ternary feldspar system were constructed graphically using topological reasoning, and experimental data and calculated phase relationships from the literature. The liquidus lines and solidus or solvus paths are unique at constant P and aH2O. The composition of a liquid evolves with time and moves along a fractionation line by removal of successive crystal fractions, whereas the compositions of each of the crystal fractions lie on and define a solidus or solvus path. Most but not all such water-buffered lines and paths differ only slightly from those in which water is free to build up during crystallization and aH2O to increase, as in many rocks. Liquid compositions lying along liquidus fractionation lines are not normally preserved, unless erupted as aphyric lavas. The solidus or solvus paths may be preserved either as overgrowth zones in crystals (zoning paths) or as a series of crystal fractions in layered intrusions. The topologies of the lines and paths depend mainly on the nature of the two-feldspar boundary line separating the plagioclase and sanidine fields which is a function of PH2O or aH2O at constant P; increases in either progressively lower the liquidi and solidi and cause larger intersections of the solidi with the solvus. One-feldspar solidus paths at high P and aH2O are simple, whereas they are complex and may bend back on themselves at low PH2O or low aH2O at high P. Two-feldspar paths may be simultaneous (cotectic) or sequential (peritectic). The former are simple and do not meet at high P and aH2O, the critical solution line lying in the gap; they are complex and may bend back or overlap at low PH2O or low aH2O at high P, the position of the critical solution line being hard to determine. Liquids which have simultaneously fractionated two feldspars may fractionate only one towards the end, crystallization changing from subsolvus to hypersolvus. Sequential paths may involve overgrowth of an early feldspar by a later one, usually sanidine overgrowths on plagioclase, but plagioclase overgrowths on sanidine occur. These complexities explain in part the difficulties of unravelling the textural and compositional relationships of ternary feldspars in water-poor felsic igneous rocks (even in the absence of alteration or complex magma dynamics) and of trying to deduce phase relationships from natural occurrences of feldspars.