Revealing mineralization and subsequent hydrothermal events: Insights from Ar-40/Ar-39 isochron and novel gas mixing lines of hydrothermal quartzs by progressive crushing

Increasingly more data have indicated that the Ar-40/Ar-39 crushing technique provides a very useful approach to determine the mineralization ages of hydrothermal ore deposits. In this study novel gas mixing lines are proposed based on the data of two quartz samples by Ar-40/Ar-39 crushing. Electron microprobe analyses indicate that the quartz grains contain K-rich silicate microlites. Both quartzs by crushing yield two mixing lines with ages corresponding respectively to those of K-feldspar or sericite (post-mineralization fluids) and muscovite samples (ore-forming fluids). This is the first report that both ages of secondary and primary fluid inclusions (SFIs and PFIs) are confirmed correspondingly by those of the K-rich minerals. This study strongly indicates that the Ar-40/Ar-39 crushing technique is very useful to determine the ages of geofluid activities. The newly proposed gas mixing patterns are shown on the inverse and normal isochron diagrams, indicating: (1) the mixtures are in different proportions of the PFIs and SFIs in different crushing steps; (2) the gas mixing lines yield PFI ages with low initial Ar-40/Ar-36 ratios; (3) an intermediate age between PFI and SFI ages cannot be obtained because the progressive crushing technique never release gas mixtures with a constant PFI/SFI proportion for each step. The gas mixing lines are thus interpreted to yield significant geological ages. The mixing patterns will help us better understand the Ar-40/Ar-39 dating results and be used for references to other isotopic mixing isochron systems