Thermoluminescence measurements of trap depth in alkali feldspars extracted from bedrock samples

Various measurements of thermal trap depth are evaluated for K-feldspar grains extracted from a bedrock sample. The initial rise method and the various heating rates method yield consistent results for both the natural signal (E = 1.23 and 1.16 eV, respectively) and for a regenerative dose of 64 Gy (0.83 and 0.78 eV). For the fractional glow curve, apparent E-values range from 0.39 eV to a plateau around 1.50 eV. The highest values for the natural and regenerative signals are obtained using the newly-developed post-isothermal TL (pI-TL) method wherein the isothermal loss curves (gotten by subtracting TL curves obtained after different preheat durations) are fitted in the initial rise region on an Arrhenius plot. For a dose of 12.8 Gy, this method measures apparent E-values ranging from 0.73 eV to a plateau near 1.84 ± 0.06 eV. We repeat this analysis on three additional feldspar samples (two perthites and a high albite) to get a mean value of E = 1.86 ± 0.03 eV. The same analysis of natural aliquots of the K-feldspar sample yields similar results, with the two highest E-values at 1.81 and 1.86 eV. The kinetic order does not systematically vary with isothermal holding temperature or duration but remains relatively constant at 1.6 ± 0.3 (regenerative dose) and 1.5 ± 0.5 (natural dose). The apparent frequency factor, measured assuming a single E -value of 1.86 eV, decreases systematically (View the MathML source) with hold temperature and duration, a result which is consistent with a thermally-activated, distance-dependent tunneling model for feldspar thermoluminescence (i.e., a single trap depth and a continuum of apparent frequency factors). Frequency factor values measured following identical isothermal treatments are comparable between the natural and regenerative post-isothermal TL curves. By contrast, if different E-values are assumed, the apparent frequency factor values appear stochastic. Finally, it is speculated that the plateau of pI-TL E-values may be interpreted as the thermal depth of the main dosimetric trap measured with IRSL protocols

Using thermoluminescence signals from feldspars for low-temperature thermochronology

Natural thermoluminescence (TL) signals from feldspar crystals extracted from thermally stable drill cores (View the MathML sourceC) exhibit a strong dependence on geologic and laboratory thermal conditions. As burial temperature increases, the position of the TL glow curve at half-maximum intensity (i.e., the T1/2 parameter) shifts to higher measurement temperatures. This shift is also observed following isothermal treatments in the laboratory. This relationship can be explained using a kinetic model originally developed for the optical luminescence dating of feldspar grains. The thermal history of a sample is preserved in the degree of electron trap saturation as a function of thermal detrapping probability, which varies with recombination distance. A natural feldspar sample contains a range of thermal stabilities: the least stable traps will remain empty, the most stable will be full, and those traps which are partially filled will, in the case of thermal equilibrium, be diagnostic of the storage temperature. The T1/2 parameter of a TL glow curve reflects which sites remain occupied. This interpretation is further borne out by additive dose measurements which illustrate that samples buried at lower temperatures are fully saturated at lower TL measurement temperatures (View the MathML sourceC) relative to warmer samples. This signal is estimated to be useful in rapidly-cooling bedrock and should grow measurably for ∼102−106 years

Parity and Time Reversal in the Spin-Rotation Interaction

A recently reported discrepancy between experimental and theoretical values of the muon's g-2 factor is interpreted as due to small violations of the conservation of P and T in the spin-rotation coupling. The experiments place an upper limit on these violations and on the weight change of spinning gyroscopes.Comment: 3 page

Entropy of Lovelock Black Holes

A general formula for the entropy of stationary black holes in Lovelock gravity theories is obtained by integrating the first law of black hole mechanics, which is derived by Hamiltonian methods. The entropy is not simply one quarter of the surface area of the horizon, but also includes a sum of intrinsic curvature invariants integrated over a cross section of the horizon.Comment: 15 pages, plain Latex, NSF-ITP-93-4

Global Finance and Environmental Politics:

Summary This article outlines how insurance companies have so far responded to climate change. Such change threatens the viability of much of their business, by disrupting the actuarial data on which insurance risks are calculated. At the same time, insurance companies are an important component of global finance, and thus their political?economic power has led many observers to suggest that their involvement in climate politics is encouraging from an environmentalist point of view. The article critically analyses whether such optimism is justified

Bringing PLOS Genetics Editors to Preprint Servers

What's the first thing you do after making a cool new discovery? If you're like us, you run up and down the hallway, propelled by excitement, eager to show your latest result to your colleagues. But the hallway is a pretty limited audience, so we soon turn to publishing our work in a peer-reviewed journal to show it to the whole world (assuming it is an open-access journal). That's when the fun of discovery can come to a screeching halt and turn into dreary hours of formatting and online form submission only to wait weeks, if not months, for your manuscript to wend its way through the peer-review system. Preprint servers (PPS) can short-circuit those cheerless steps, at least for a time, and allow the fruits of your labor to be seen immediately by all who are interested. In addition to increasing the visibility of authors' work, PPS provide opportunities for journals to identify manuscripts that are good fit for their audience. In that vein, PLOS Genetics is pleased to announce a new initiative to use PPS for identifying and soliciting manuscripts, as part of PLOS' overall mission to improve the efficiency and accessibility of science communication (and, of course, to make the process less cheerless for authors). As part of that effort, we now have a dedicated team of editors who will focus on identifying manuscripts on PPS that are potentially suitable for publication in PLOS Genetics

Thermal partition function of photons and gravitons in a Rindler wedge

The thermal partition function of photons in any covariant gauge and gravitons in the harmonic gauge, propagating in a Rindler wedge, are computed using a local $\zeta$-function regularization approach. The correct Planckian leading order temperature dependence $T^4$ is obtained in both cases. For the photons, the existence of a surface term giving a negative contribution to the entropy is confirmed, as earlier obtained by Kabat, but this term is shown to be gauge dependent in the four-dimensional case and, therefore is discarded. It is argued that similar terms could appear dealing with any integer spin $s\geq 1$ in the massless case and in more general manifolds. Our conjecture is checked in the case of a graviton in the harmonic gauge, where different surface terms also appear, and physically consistent results arise dropping these terms. The results are discussed in relation to the quantum corrections to the black hole entropy.Comment: 29 pages, RevTeX, no figures. Minor errors corrected and a few comments changed since first submission. To be published on Phys.Rev.

Spin-gravity coupling and gravity-induced quantum phases

External gravitational fields induce phase factors in the wave functions of particles. The phases are exact to first order in the background gravitational field, are manifestly covariant and gauge invariant and provide a useful tool for the study of spin-gravity coupling and of the optics of particles in gravitational or inertial fields. We discuss the role that spin-gravity coupling plays in particular problems.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figur