Upgrade of UCSC Mineral Physics Laboratory

University Of California-Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz CA

Investigators

Abstract

This award will permit the upgrading of existing equipment in the mineral physics laboratory at UC Santa Cruz. This equipment will not only provide a state-of-the-art training ground for a broad group of graduate and undergraduate students, but will also ensure adherence to high-level laser safety protocols. The mineral physics laboratory at UCSC has an extended history of training students for placement in academia and industry who have expertise in the high-pressure spectroscopy of Earth materials, and this upgrade will allow this training to continue with more user- and safety-friendly equipment. In addition to safety upgrades of the UCSC pressure-measurement system, a new Raman spectrometer will be acquired that will replace a marginally functional and obsolete 18-year old apparatus with an instrument that has higher spatial resolutions, vastly improved detection technology, and modern instrument-control and data-collection software. The issues addressed by the research enabled by this upgrade include: the water and carbon storage capacity of the deep Earth, and how exchange of water and carbon takes place between the deep Earth and the surface environment, with relevance to the formation of Earth?s oceans; the structure and physical properties of melts and fluids at high pressures, with implications for issues ranging from explosive volcanic events generated via subduction-related processes, to the possible presence of partially melted zones near Earth?s core-mantle boundary that may represent the ?roots? of deeply-derived volcanic upwellings. This apparatus will be deployed for non-high pressure materials-characterization as well, including probing fine-grained archeological samples, and fluid inclusion and paleontologic studies. In essence, it will also function as a tool for rapid and fine-scale mineral and fluid characterization that will yield insights into phenomena as diverse as the firing temperatures of ancient ceramics, the degree (and type) of fossilization produced in different geologic environments, and the compositions of ore-forming fluids trapped in mineral hosts.