Thermal significance of fission-track length distributions

✍ Scribed by Kevin D. Crowley

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1985
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 833 KB
• Volume: 10
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0735-245X
• DOI: 10.1016/0735-245x(85)90120-6

✦ Synopsis

The semi-analytical solution of an equation describing the production and shortening of fission tracks in apatite suggests that certain thermal histories have unique length-distribution "signatures". Isothermal-heating histories should be characterized by flattened, length-shortened distributions; step-heating histories should be characterized by bimodal track length distributions; and linear-cooling histories should be characterized by negatively skewed, length-shortened distributions. The model formulated here to investigate track length distributions can be used to constrain the thermal histories of natural samples for which unbiased track length data are available-provided that the geologic history of the system of interest can be used to partially constrain one of the unknowns in the model equations, time or temperature.