Thermally modulated optically stimulated luminescence (TM-OSL) of quartz

It has recently been shown in computer simulations of the OSL process that increasing the temperature during optical stimulation allows the probability of electron excitation from traps to the conduction band to be modulated. This, in turn, facilitates the efficient separation of individual OSL components. A result of the thermally modulated OSL (TM-OSL) measurement method is a peak shaped curve. In addition, the position of the TM-OSL peak on the temperature axis can be controlled by the stimulation energy, heating rate and photon flux used for optical stimulation. Here, the results of a TM-OSL study for natural quartz samples are presented. The basic features of the TM-OSL curves of quartz are shown for different parameters that control their shape. The investigation is focused on traps that are most sensitive to light and which are the source of the OSL signal that is the most useful in retrospective dosimetry. A method by which it can be measured separately from the slower components is presented. The very first attempt at directly estimating the optical depth and the parameters determining the strength of the electron-phonon coupling for the traps responsible for the fast OSL component in quartz has been made.