Progress and pitfalls of the SAR protocol for the quartz violet stimulated luminescence (VSL) signal: A case study from Sardinia

In the quest for extending the upper age limit of optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of quartz, it was shown that violet stimulated luminescence (VSL) may be a promising candidate. However, difficulties in the application of the single aliquot regenerative dose (SAR) protocol for VSL has been reported in previous studies. In this study, a set of experiments was carried out to investigate the behaviour of the VSL signal under different measurement conditions with the aim to improve the SAR VSL protocol in terms of passing the procedural tests of the SAR protocol, i.e., recycling ratio, recuperation and dose recovery. The validity of an optimised SAR protocol was then evaluated on four coarse-grained quartz samples from Sardinia, for which previously reported OSL and post-IR IRSL ages are available. Our result showed that all measured aliquots meet the recuperation, recycling ratio and dose recovery criteria, indicating that the proposed protocol is suitable for the studied samples. The obtained VSL and reference ages agree within uncertainty (2 sigma) for most of the samples except one sample with a largest expected equivalent dose of -320 Gy, for which the VSL significantly (-50%) underestimates despite satisfactory dose recovery result. This underestimation is most likely due to trapping sensitivity change between the natural and all subsequent regenerated VSL signals induced by the first preheating in the SAR procedure, which is likely dose dependent. To minimise sensitivity change, the sensitivity-corrected multiple aliquot regenerative dose (SC-MAR) protocol was applied. The SC-MAR protocol yields VSL ages in agreement with reference ages for two samples (1 sigma); the other two samples show overestimation. We show that the observed age overestimation can be explained by incomplete resetting of the natural signal after 7 days SOL2 exposure used for the SC-MAR procedure. Bleaching experiments confirm variable bleaching behaviour among different samples. However, it is unclear whether this different bleaching behaviour arises from measuring samples with different bleaching histories, mineralogical compositions, or VSL source trap properties.