Abstract
Low temperature thermochronology plays a key role in the study of the tectonic evolution of the upper crust. History modeling of apatite fission-track requires the apparent age and the confined track-length distribution of spontaneous tracks. Obtaining length data does not require either thermal neutron irradiation or LA-ICP-MS measurements of the uranium content of the grains. This paper attempts to decouple the apatite fission-track age from the apatite fission-track length, but to combine the fission-track lengths with the respective apatite U-Th/He age to model the thermal history. The experiments were designed and conducted using a new Mathematica® modeling software “Low-T Thermo”. Results of this modeling show that the thermal history modeling of apatite U-Th/He and fission-track ages can constrain the apatite fission-track length thermal history in the He partial retention zone and fission-track partial annealing zone, respectively. It implies that this combination of apatite fission-track length and apatite U-Th/He age has not been implemented before but is presented here as an alternative way of determining thermal histories without the addition of apatite fission-track age.
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Acknowledgments
This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 42072229, 41102131), the Fundamental Research Fund for the Central Universities of China (No. 12lgpy22), the Guangdong Natural Science Foundation (No. 2021A1515011658), the Science and Technology Program of Guangzhou (No. 202002030184), and the China Scholarship Council. Diane Seward provided many important constructive suggestions for this paper. The original manuscript was also greatly improved by Pieter Vermeesch, Raymond Jonckheere, Paul Green, Shaowen Liu, and Matt Sagar. The final publication is available at Springer via https://doi.org/10.1007/s12583-020-1071-x.
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Ding, R. Low Temperature Thermal History Reconstruction Based on Apatite Fission-Track Length Distribution and Apatite U-Th/He Age Using Low-T Thermo. J. Earth Sci. 34, 717–725 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12583-020-1071-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12583-020-1071-x