Stability of IRSL signals from sedimentary K-feldspar samples

Abstract

Recent work has identified IR stimulated luminescence signals at elevated temperature from both potassium- and sodium-rich feldspars that have much lower anomalous fading rates than the conventional signal measured using IR stimulation at 50°C. This paper examines the stability of these signals for potassium-rich sedimentary feldspars. We show that the natural post-IR IRSL (pIRIR) signal from a 3.6 Ma old sample is in apparent saturation on a laboratory generated dose response curve, i.e. it does not show detectable fading in nature although a low fading rate is observed on laboratory time scales. We show that the pIRIR signal has a greater thermal stability than the IRSL signal and that the trend in increasing thermal stability is mirrored by a decreasing fading rate. We also investigate the effect of preheat temperature and IR stimulation power on the decay shape and conclude that the data can be explained in terms of either a single- or multiple-trap model. We present evidence that may suggest that at least part of pIRIR signal is derived from a high temperature trap (∼550°C thermoluminescence (TL) peak), although again the data can also be explained in terms of a single-trap model. Finally, we present dose response curves and characteristic curvature constants (D₀) values for various IRSL signals and conclude that the more stable signals saturate more quickly than the less stable signals and that the initial and final signals saturate at approximately the same level.