Establishing a common standardised growth curve for single-aliquot OSL dating of quartz from sediments in the Jilantai area of North China

Abstract

Establishing a common standardised growth curve (SGC) can substantially reduce the instrumental time for equivalent-dose (De) measurements in optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating. Several studies have indicated that different samples have different dose–response curves (DRCs) and therefore that it is difficult to construct a common SGC, although an SGC has been proposed in some cases. In this study, our aims were to construct a regional SGC based on small aliquots of sedimentary quartz from more than 100 samples from different sedimentary environments in the Jilantai Basin in North China and to investigate the applicability of different methods of establishing an SGC for the area. The precision of the De values of aliquots which were obtained using the SGC was compared with those obtained using the single-aliquot regenerative (SAR) protocol. Our results indicate the following: (1) for establishing an SGC using the regenerative normalisation (Re-SGC) method, selecting a suitable re-normalisation dose that is close to double the characteristic saturation dose, 2D0, can reduce the inter-aliquot/inter-sample variation in the form of DRCs within a larger dose range. (2) A common regional SGC can be established for the Jilantai area using the Re-SGC and least-squares normalisation (LS-SGC) methods, which provides reliable dating results within the 200 Gy De range.