New constraints on the origin of the ophiolitic rocks within sinorogenic turbiditic sequences at Cilento region (southern Italy)

Mafic igneous rocks (pillow lavas and gabbros) embedded as olistoliths within Miocene turbiditic sequences crop out in the Cilento area at the Mount Centaurino (Campania region, Southern Italy). The concentration of major oxides, as well as trace element ratios (Nb/Yb, Nb/Ta, Th/Nb) and the chondrite-normalized Rare Earth Elements (REE) patterns suggest a tholeiitic character with Mid Oceanic Ridge Basalts (MORB) affinity. The chemical composition of pillow lavas is consistent with magmas generated by 10% degrees of non-modal fractional partial melting, of a spinel-bearing MORB-type asthenospheric mantle. Regarding gabbros, the calculated composition of parental melts in equilibrium with the clinopyroxenes show a wide compositional range, and there are very different from the pillow basalts of the Mount Centaurino, suggesting that the clinopyroxenes might have derived from more evolved melts compared to those that produced the basalts. The origin of these olistoliths is not yet understood. Here we suggest that these rocks represent fragment of a dismantled accretionary wedge embedded during the deposition of the Cilento group sedimentary successions in a thrust top basin

Geochemical and Sr-Nd isotopic features of the Zaro volcanic complex: insights on the magmatic processes triggering a small-scale prehistoric eruption at Ischia island (south Italy)

The prehistoric (< 7 ka) Zaro eruption at Ischia island (Southern Italy) produced a lava complex overlaying a pyroclastic deposit. Although being of low energy, the Zaro eruption might have caused casualties among the neolithic population that inhabited that area of Ischia, and damages to their settlements. A similar eruption at Ischia with its present-day population would turn into a disaster. Therefore, understanding the magmatic processes that triggered the Zaro eruption would be important for volcanic hazard assessment and risk mitigation, so as to improve a knowledge that can be applied to other active volcanic areas worldwide. The main Zaro lava body is trachyte and hosts abundant mafic and felsic enclaves. Here all juvenile facies have been fully characterized from petrographic, geochemical and isotopic viewpoints. The whole dataset (major and trace element contents; Sr-Nd isotopic composition) leads to rule out a genetic link by fractional crystallization among the variable facies. Thus, we suggest that the Zaro mafic enclaves could represent a deep-origin mafic magma that mingled/mixed with the main trachytic one residing in the Ischia shallow magmatic system. The intrusion of such a mafic magma into a shallow reservoir filled by partly crystallized, evolved magma could have destabilized the magmatic system presumably acting as a rapid eruption trigger. The resulting processes of convection, mixing and rejuvenation have possibly played an important role in pre- and syn-eruptive phases also in several eruptions of different sizes in the Neapolitan area and elsewhere in the world

A muon-track reconstruction exploiting stochastic losses for large-scale Cherenkov detectors

IceCube is a cubic-kilometer Cherenkov telescope operating at the South Pole. The main goal of IceCube is the detection of astrophysical neutrinos and the identification of their sources. High-energy muon neutrinos are observed via the secondary muons produced in charge current interactions with nuclei in the ice. Currently, the best performing muon track directional reconstruction is based on a maximum likelihood method using the arrival time distribution of Cherenkov photons registered by the experiment\u27s photomultipliers. A known systematic shortcoming of the prevailing method is to assume a continuous energy loss along the muon track. However at energies >1 TeV the light yield from muons is dominated by stochastic showers. This paper discusses a generalized ansatz where the expected arrival time distribution is parametrized by a stochastic muon energy loss pattern. This more realistic parametrization of the loss profile leads to an improvement of the muon angular resolution of up to 20% for through-going tracks and up to a factor 2 for starting tracks over existing algorithms. Additionally, the procedure to estimate the directional reconstruction uncertainty has been improved to be more robust against numerical errors

New constraints on the origin of the ophiolitic rocks within sinorogenic turbiditic sequences at Cilento region (southern Italy)

Mafic igneous rocks (pillow lavas and gabbros) embedded as olistoliths within Miocene turbiditic sequences crop out in the Cilento area at the Mount Centaurino (Campania region, Southern Italy). The concentration of major oxides, as well as trace element ratios (Nb/Yb, Nb/Ta, Th/Nb) and the chondrite-normalized Rare Earth Elements (REE) patterns suggest a tholeiitic character with Mid Oceanic Ridge Basalts (MORB) affinity. The chemical composition of pillow lavas is consistent with magmas generated by 10% degrees of non-modal fractional partial melting, of a spinel-bearing MORB-type asthenospheric mantle. Regarding gabbros, the calculated composition of parental melts in equilibrium with the clinopyroxenes show a wide compositional range, and there are very different from the pillow basalts of the Mount Centaurino, suggesting that the clinopyroxenes might have derived from more evolved melts compared to those that produced the basalts. The origin of these olistoliths is not yet understood. Here we suggest that these rocks represent fragment of a dismantled accretionary wedge embedded during the deposition of the Cilento group sedimentary successions in a thrust top basin

Timescales of magmatic processes prior to the ∼4.7 ka Agnano-Monte Spina eruption (Campi Flegrei caldera, Southern Italy) based on diffusion chronometry from sanidine phenocrysts

Barium diffusion chronometry applied to sanidine phenocrysts from the trachytic Agnano-Monte Spina eruption (∼4.7 ka) constrains the time between reactivation and eruption of magma batches in the Campi Flegrei caldera. Backscattered electron imaging and quantitative electron microprobe measurements on 50 sanidine phenocrysts from representative pumice samples document core-to-rim compositional zoning. We focus on compositional breaks near the crystal rims that record magma mixing processes just prior to eruption. Diffusion times were modeled at a magmatic temperature of 930 °C using profiles based on quantitative BaO point analyses, X-ray scans, and grayscale swath profiles, yielding times ≤60 years between mixing and eruption. Such short timescales are consistent with volcanological and geochronological data that indicate that at least six eruptions occurred in the Agnano-San Vito area during few centuries before the Agnano-Monte Spina eruption. Thus, the short diffusion timescales are similar to time intervals between eruptions. Therefore, the rejuvenation time of magma residing in a shallow reservoir after influx of a new magma batch that triggered the eruption, and thus pre-eruption warning times, may be as short as years to a few decades at Campi Flegrei caldera