Low-T Thermo: a new program for arbitrarily combining low-T thermochronological data to model thermal history

摘要: A robust code, called Low-T Thermo, has been developed to combine low-T thermochronological data arbitrarily to model thermal history. After apatite fission-track age and confined length are decoupled into two completely independent data to inverse thermal history and thermal history inversion using mica Ar-Ar age or bedrock quartz optically stimulated luminescence age are developed, there are eight kinds of low-T thermochronological data used to inverse thermal history including apatite fission-track age, apatite fission-track confined length, zircon fission-track age, apatite (U–Th)/He age, zircon (U–Th)/He age, mica Ar-Ar, bedrock quartz optically stimulated luminescence age and vitrinite reflectance. A total of 247 kinds of combination modes can be used to jointly inverse thermal history in theory (except the eight single methods modelling). These arbitrary combinations are helpful to model thermal history with the “incomplete” low-T thermochronological data set regarded to be unuseful for thermal history modelling and reduce experimental cost. For arbitrary combination of different low-T thermochronological data, each low-T thermochronological method is independent incompletely and the equivalent p-value is used to be the identical evaluation indicator in the inverse process. The usefulness of the code is demonstrated by modelling thermal history of existing low-T thermochronological data in the areas of Dabie Mountain, Ahimanawa Range and Southern Alps.