Thermal activation of OSL as a geothermometer for quartz grain heating during fault movements

Abstract

In discussions of ESR dating of fault movements, there has been much debate whether zeroing of ESR signals is a mechanical shearing effect or caused by frictional heating. The OSL (optically stimulated luminescence) sensitivity of quartz is known to increase after heating. This thermal activation of dose response of the OSL in quartz should be useful as a geothermometer to test whether quartz particles in fault gouge had been heated. We tested the OSL sensitivities of quartz from fault gouge, and from a control (quartz grains from sandstone) and were able to show heat-induced enhancement of OSL sensitivity to a test dose. We observed that relative enhancement of OSL dose response (ratio of heated to unheated single aliquots) is significantly less for the finest grains (45–75 and 100–150 μm) compared with coarser grains (150–250 μm). These data are consistent with a model of zeroing of the quartz grains during faulting, by frictional heating localized to the grain boundaries, which would be expected to affect smaller grains more than large ones. This argues against a zeroing model in which the entire fault gouge is heated by friction. Higher laboratory preheating of sandstone quartz reduces between-aliquot variability of OSL dose response in the unheated grains to nearly zero. Unheated coarsest fault gouge grains displayed virtually no among-aliquot variability, whereas fine grains showed much larger between-aliquot variability; as with the quartz sand, variability dropped to near zero after laboratory heating, suggesting that fine grains in fault gouge have experienced a wide range of natural thermal histories during faulting. This may present a problem for ESR dating of fault gouge using the plateau method.