Investigating the thermally transferred optically stimulated luminescence source trap in fired geological quartz

• OSL pre-dose reproducibility test suggested thermal charge transfer.
• Thermal annealing curve also indicated the presence of TT-OSL emission.
• Correlation studies showed 375 and 325 °C peaks to be the source and receptor respectively.
• TT-OSL observed in case of samples which contained 375 °C TL peak.
• Bleaching nature of the signal seems to establish the 375 °C TL as the source trap.

The pre-dosed thermoluminescence (TL) emission of quartz has been found to be useful in retrospective dosimetry and archaeometry. Though the pre-dosed optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and TL emissions have been reported to be similar, the former has been found to be un-reliable for the equivalent dose estimation. As this measurement protocol involves thermal heating at around 400 °C, the work reported in this paper investigated the influence of this heating on the OSL using fired specimens from various regions. The results suggested that the discrepancy in the behaviour of two emissions is caused by the presence of the thermally transferred optically stimulated luminescence (TT-OSL) induced by thermal-activation involved in the pre-dose treatment. This transferred signal was observed to be very significant in the case of samples containing a prominent higher-temperature TL peak at ∼375 °C. The characterization of this signal based on (i) the nature of the glow curves, (ii) thermal-annealing of the OSL trap, (iii) observation of the TT-OSL, (iv) bleaching of the source trap and (v) the correlation between TL and OSL seems to suggest that the trap corresponding to this TL peak is the source trap in the TT-OSL emission mechanism.