Abstract

Alkali metals Na, K, Rb and Cs are depleted in planetary mantles and their depletion is commonly attributed to the effect of volatility during the condensation of the first solids in the solar nebula or the high temperatures involved during planetary growth. Most models of planetary differentiation assume that alkalis behave entirely as lithophile elements and do not participate in core segregation. Here, we tested this hypothesis by determining experimentally the partitioning of Na, Cs and Rb between iron sulfide and silicate (Dsulf/sil) and combining it with available data from the literature on K, Na and Cs partitioning. Our experiments were conducted at 1–3.5 GPa, with an additional one at 8 GPa, 1600–1900 °C, and varying FeO contents, which lead to a relatively large range of O content in the sulfide phases (up to 13 wt%). We found maximum Dsulf/sil of 0.8, 0.4, and 0.36 for Na, Cs and Rb respectively. In addition, Dsulf/sil for Na, K, Cs and Rb increases with temperature and O content in the sulfide and decreases with FeO content in the silicate. The degree of polymerization of the silicate melt and the S content of the sulfide additionally increase Dsulf/sil for Na, K and Cs. Since the solubility of O in sulfides is correlated with the FeO content of the silicate and both have opposite effects on Dsulf/sil, varying the oxidation state of equilibrating material does not significantly affect Dsulf/sil, which is more controlled by the temperature of equilibration. We modeled core formation for Earth, Mars and asteroid Vesta, assuming that some of the accreted embryos contained immiscible sulfides, that segregated into planetary cores. Our results show that with such a scenario, significant amounts of Na, K, Cs and Rb were sequestered in planetary cores, leading to core/mantle distribution of alkalis between 4·10−5 and 0.15. The depletion of alkalis in the mantles of Earth, Mars and Vesta could have resulted from combined effects of volatility and core segregation, but are largely due to volatile depletion in the accreting materials.

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