The effect of test dose and first IR stimulation temperature on post-IR IRSL measurements of rock slices

Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) is increasingly applied to the dating of rock surfaces. There is at present no practical way of separating pure minerals (quartz and feldspar) from hard rocks for OSL measurement without losing the grain-size dependent dosimetric information and there is little information about the performance of the single-aliquot regeneration-dose (SAR) measurement protocol on the post-infrared infrared stimulated luminescence (pIRIR) signals from rock slices. The latter is investigated here. Our data indicate that there is a systematic increase in dose response curve saturation (or D_o) with test dose size when the regeneration doses are first given in increasing order, and then decreasing order. This trend disappears if these orders are reversed. The reproducibility of dose response curves is dependent on the size of the test dose (poorer for small test dose). For rock slices given a saturation dose in the laboratory, it is observed that the sensitivity corrected pIRIR₂₉₀ signal lies close to saturation level of the dose response curve, for first IR stimulation at temperatures between 50 and 250°C. However, the pIRIR₂₉₀ signal from naturally saturated slices lies close to the laboratory saturation levels only for higher first IR stimulation temperatures e.g. 200°C or 250°C. Our data confirm earlier suggestions based on sand-grain measurements that, for older samples, accurate measurements close to saturation require that a higher first IR temperature is used.