Hydroxide in olivine: A quantitative determination of the absolute amount and calibration of the IR spectrum

Olivine is an important host of hydrogen in the Earth's upper mantle, and the OH abundance in this mineral determines many important physical properties of the planet's interior. To date, natural and experimentally hydrated olivines have been analyzed by uncalibrated spectroscopic methods with large (±100%) uncertainties in accuracy. We determined the hydrogen contents of three natural olivines by 15N nuclear reaction analysis and used the results to calibrate the common infrared (IR) spectroscopic method for quantitative hydrogen analysis of olivine. OH content (expressed as parts per million H2O by weight) is 0.188 times the total integrated absorbance of the fundamental OH stretching bands in the 3750–3100 cm−1 region. The results indicate that an upward revision of some previous determinations by factors of between 2 and 4 is necessary. The most hydrous naturally occurring mantle‐derived olivine analyzed to date contains 240 ppm wt. H2O. Retrospective application of this calibration to experimentally hydrated olivines may be limited by spectral differences in some cases and by the previous use of nonpolarized IR spectra.