Characterisation of blue-light stimulated luminescence components in different quartz samples: implications for dose measurement

Over the last few years, we have become increasingly confident that quartz is a reliable natural dosimeter for sediment dating. Nevertheless, there is only a limited understanding of the behaviour of the different components of optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) from quartz. Recent single-aliquot dose-evaluation protocols seem to be relatively free of complications when applied to quartz dominated by the fast OSL component coming from 325degreesC TL region, but this may not be true for quartz in which other components are more significant. An adequate understanding of how different OSL components behave during various measurement cycles is critical to ensuring that our dose evaluation protocols are robust and it is also important to our interpretation of the variation of apparent dose with optical stimulation time for identification of partial bleaching. We report here the principal results from measurement of (a) sensitisation, (b) thermal stability, (c) recuperation, and (d) infrared response as a function of stimulation temperature from 3 different samples of sedimentary quartz selected on the basis of relative OSL contribution from different blue light stimulated linearly modulated (LM-OSL) components. We then discuss the implications of these characteristics for dose assessment using the single aliquot regeneration dose protocol. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.