| Abstract: | Auto-regenerative dating of zircon grains from fired materials has been shown to be a very powerful technique. The high internal dose rate in zircon gives a measurable auto-regenerated TL signal a few months after the natural TL measurement, allowing the determination of age without dosimetry. The technique has been extended to zircon grains from sediments, using optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) techniques to measure the natural signal. The auto-regenerated signal is only a few hundred photons and cannot be measured above background using present OSL techniques, so it is counted using the highly sensitive TL reader developed for fired zircon grains. Preliminary measurements on fired zircons are in good accord with TL dating and the known ages, but precision becomes poor for samples <1 ka in age. Possible improvements using auto-regenerative phototransfer TL dating are discussed. |
