Analysis of Thermoluminescence Data Dominated by Second-Order Kinetics

In the analysis of the thermoluminescence glow curves, and in particular when applied to TL dosimetry and TL dating of archaeological and geological samples, a first order behaviour of the peaks involved is usually implicitly assumed. In this work the TL response for second order kinetics is described and shown that the usual analysis, in which a linear growth of TL with excitation dose is assumed, is correct to a good approximation provided that the curvcs are fïrst shifted in temperature so that their peaks coincide. This is true for a single isolated peak and for a series of overlapping peaks.