Characteristics of LM-OSL from several different types of quartz

We present Linear-Modulation OSL (LM-OSL) curves from several different types of quartz, including sedimentary quartz, bulk rock crystal and synthetic quartz. The LM-OSL method consists of linearly increasing the intensity of the stimulation light while continuously monitoring the OSL emission from the sample. With this technique, one obtains peaks of luminescence intensity versus time (Bulur, 1996) in which the position of the peak is inversely related to the photoionization cross-section of the trap. The shape of the LM-OSL curve is directly related to the shape of the conventional OSL decay curve in which the stimulating light source is maintained at constant intensity (so-called Continuous-Wave OSL, or CW-OSL). In the latter, the OSL from the traps with the highest photoionization cross-section decays most rapidly with stimulation time, while OSL from those traps with smaller photoionization cross-sections is characterized by longer decay times. In this paper, data are presented comparing the CW-OSL and LM-OSL curves for several different quartz types with particular focus on the changes in the shapes of each of these curves with sample type pre-heat temperature, and measurement temperature. Several different LM-OSL components are found for each sample, each with different photoionization cross-sections, but a universal behavior for quartz is not observed; each sample is different. From the dependence upon pre-heat temperature, features associated with shallow traps can be identified. Traps which empty very rapidly can be observed more easily in the LM-OSL curves than in the conventional CW-OSL curves, and the temperature dependence of the photoionization cross-section for the various components can be clearly discerned.