What can we learn from X-ray diffraction and seismic velocities across the alpha-beta quartz transition at lower crust conditions?

Quartz, the most common mineral constituent of the Earth’s continental crust, undergoes the displacive α-β transformation at pressures and temperatures of the lower crustal conditions. This transition is associated with important variations in the thermodynamic properties (such as thermal expansion and isothermal bulk modulus) and is therefore thought to cause important seismic velocity contrasts that are distinguished by seismic tomography. The α-β transition is characterized by a non-linear increase in volume with temperature and an abrupt variation in bulk modulus, which, at the transition, drops from about 70 GPa to nearly zero within 10-15 K. Although well-known at room pressure, the behavior of quartz across the transition at high pressure, i.e., at Earth-relevant conditions, remains largely unexplored.

In this work, we have characterized this transition at high P-T conditions by means of X-ray diffraction and acoustic measurements. The experiments were performed at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF, beamline ID06) using a multi anvil press up to 3 GPa and 1400 °C. The measured velocities show a strong decrease of V_p toward the phase transition, followed by a steep increase in the β-field, reaching values higher than those in the α-field. In our data, this increase is not as large as that predicted by thermodynamic models using the known elastic properties of quartz (e.g., Abers and Hacker 2016). As anticipated, V_s is rather constant throughout the transition, resulting in major variations in the V_p/V_s ratio. The unit cell volume was calculated from the collected diffraction patterns. Contrary to the well-documented negative thermal expansion of quartz in the β-field at room pressure, the unit cell volumes obtained at high-pressure show a slight continuous volume increase during heating after the phase transition.

In conclusion, we document here that the behaviour of quartz across the α-β transition at high P-T is different from what has been previously predicted, which is likely a consequence of the poor knowledge of β-quartz thermo-elastic properties at high P-T. This could affect the interpretation of seismic data in the deep crust, which is currently based on extrapolations of the room-pressure behavior of the α-β quartz transition.