Peculiarities of optically stimulated luminescence in halite

• Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) of rock salt (halite) was studied.
• The measurements were performed using the variable delay OSL method (VD-OSL).
• It was found that the relative regeneration of OSL intensity in halite could be as high as 600–700%.
• Inverse fading was observed.
• The regeneration effect (RE) remains at a constant level in the long time scale.

Sodium chloride – NaCl is one of materials indicating strong OSL signal after exposure on ionizing radiation. Previous studies of the OSL response in pure sodium chloride showed coexistence of fading and regeneration of the signal using the newly developed variable delay optically stimulated luminescence technique (VD-OSL). This paper presents investigations of some peculiarities of long time scale OSL properties of rock salt (halite) including sensitization phenomena for various bleaching methods. Dose response characteristics were studied in the range from 200 mGy to 1 Gy for series of halite aliquots without signal bleaching and for single aliquot using zeroing by blue and green light.