This is a repository copy of Deformation behavior of migmatites: insights from microstructural analysis of a garnet-sillimanite-mullite-quartz-feldspar-bearing anatectic migmatite at Rampura-Agucha, Aravalli-Delhi Fold Belt, NW India.
A model for intermediate-depth earthquakes of subduction zones is evaluated based on shear localization, shear heating, and runaway creep within thin carbonate layers in an altered downgoing oceanic plate and the overlying mantle wedge. Thermal shear instabilities in carbonate lenses add to potential mechanisms for intermediate-depth seismicity, which are based on serpentine dehydration and embrittlement of altered slabs or viscous shear instabilities in narrow fine-grained olivine shear zones. Peridotites in subducting plates and the overlying mantle wedge may be altered by reactions with CO
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-bearing fluids sourced from seawater or the deep mantle, to form carbonate minerals, in addition to hydrous silicates. Effective viscosities of magnesian carbonates are higher than those for antigorite serpentine and they are markedly lower than those for H
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O-saturated olivine. However, magnesian carbonates may extend to greater mantle depths than hydrous silicates at temperatures and pressures of subduction zones. Strain rates within altered downgoing mantle peridotites may be localized within carbonated layers following slab dehydration. A simple model of shear heating and temperature-sensitive creep of carbonate horizons, based on experimentally determined creep laws, predicts conditions of stable and unstable shear with strain rates up to 10/s, comparable to seismic velocities of frictional fault surfaces. Applied to intermediate-depth earthquakes of the Tonga subduction zone and the double Wadati–Benioff zone of NE Japan, this mechanism provides an alternative to the generation of earthquakes by dehydration embrittlement, beyond the stability of antigorite serpentine in subduction zones.
Garnetiferous pelitic to psammopelitic migmatites widespread across the central and eastern part of the Aravalli–Delhi Fold Belt in NW India record two distinct orogenies, e.g. the Aravalli Orogeny (1.7–1.6 Ga) and the Delhi Orogeny (1.0 Ga). In this study, we integrate field geological studies with textural and mineral–chemical analyses, P–T pseudosection modelling and in situ monazite dating in anatectic migmatites in the Aravalli Supergroup occurring along the Deoli–Shahpura segment. The study reveals formation of peak assemblages of garnet + sillimanite + biotite + K-feldspar + melt and garnet + muscovite + K-feldspar + melt in two anatectic migmatite samples. P–T pseudosection modelling suggests that anatexis in the gneisses occurred at ~8 kbar and 700–800°C along a tight-loop clockwise P–T path. Monazite ages from the migmatites indicate that the anatexis occurred at ~1.73–1.74 Ga. This age is similar to the Palaeoproterozoic anatexis (at 7–8 kbar) and charnockite emplacement in the Sandmata and the Mangalwar complexes, the subsolidus amphibolite-facies metamorphism in the Rajpura–Dariba and Pur–Banera supracrustal belts, and the A-type granite magmatism in the North Delhi Fold Belt. We propose that the Palaeoproterozoic migmatites in central and eastern Rajasthan are part of the one crustal unit that underwent anatexis during an accretion event along the NE–SW-trending Aravalli orogenic belt.
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