Thermal annealing of fission tracks in apatite 2. A quantitative analysis

Abstract

An extensive set of laboratory annealing data, relating the reduction in mean confined track length of induced fission tracks in Durango apatite (Mexico) to annealing temperature and time, has been used to construct an empirical mathematical description of the annealing process. Firstly, Laplacian smoothing splines are used to reveal the gross nature of the dependence of the length reduction, r, on logarithm of time (ln(t)) and inverse absolute temperature (T-1). This suggests that contours of equal length reduction in an Arrhenius plot can be described by parallel or only slightly fanning straight lines. In seeking a more rigorous description, we construct a series of models relating some f..