Equivalent dose measurement using a single aliquot of quartz

The principles behind an additive-dose single-aliquot protocol and the need for such a protocol are outlined. It is shown for two Australian sedimentary quartz samples that the decay of OSL during a repeated measurement cycle, consisting of a 10 s preheat at a given temperature followed by a 0.1 s exposure to green light at 110oC, can be well represented by exponential decay. An additive-dose protocol is presented which requires only one aliquot for the estimation of the equivalent dose (De). This protocol has been applied to quartz from 11 Australian sites. To illustrate the value of the single-aliquot approach, the apparent values of De for 14 samples, containing doses of between 0.01 and 100 Gy, have been measured in triplicate at preheat temperatures of between 150 and 300oC, using a single-aliquot for each De measurement. Excellent agreement is found between these single-aliquot estimates of De and those from additive-dose multiple-aliquot protocols, over the entire dose range. (author)