Comparison of IRSL and GLSL dating of aeolian sediments

Abstract

The advantage of Optical Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dating over thermoluminescence dating is that the OSL signal can be bleached to nearly zero level in natural sun light within minutes. Aeolian sediments in loess/desert transitional zone in China provide records of climatic and monsoonal changes in the region. Infrared Stimulated Luminescence (IRSL)and Green Light Stimulated Luminescence(GLSL)dating using 125-150μm potassium rich feldspar and quartz minerals separated from six samples gave concordant results: (1)Of the same sample, IRSL and GLSL ages are nearly the same, but from the whole trend, IRSL ages are smaller than GLSL ones, which is more evident with the increase of the age values, perhaps resulting from mid term decay of IRSL signal (2)Thermal transfer due to preheat has made little contribution to both IRSL and GLSL signals, meaning that the influence of thermal transfer on dating samples more than 1 ka older is too small to be taken into account (3)GLSL dating can give good GLSL ED plateau of CHN 1Q through late light subtraction technique (4)High stimulation temperature can give high IRSL ED.