Low temperature thermochronology using thermoluminescence signals from K-feldspar

Thermoluminescence (TL) and isothermal thermoluminescence (ITL) signals from K-feldspar were studied. The signals from K-feldspar have provided multiple thermometers for thermochronological study. Protocols of multiple aliquot (MA) additive-dose (A) and regenerative-dose (R) have been applied and tested for equivalent dose (D_e) determinations using TL and ITL signals (MAA-TL, MAR-TL, MAA-ITL and MAR-ITL). Single aliquot regenerative-dose (SAR) protocol was only applied for D_e determination using ITL signals (SAR-ITL). A 50–60°C translation of heating temperature was necessary for the ITL D_e values to agree with TL D_e values. Based on the experiment results and merits-drawbacks comparison of the five tested protocols, the MAR-TL and SAR-ITL are favorable because of their efficiency and accuracy in D_e determinations. These two protocols were further applied to the samples from the Nujiang River valley and both explicitly demonstrated the thermal history of the samples. They are suitable for K-feldspar thermochronology study. They, as a parallelism of the previous studies of quartz TL and ITL signals, can provide multiple measures for a rock sample with the same thermal history in geo-thermochronological studies.