The olivine-ilmenite thermometer.

It is noted that the partitioning of Fe(2+) and Mg between olivine and ilmenite is temperature-dependent and can serve as a geothermometer if the activity-composition relations are determined. The paper reports on the study of the partitioning from 700-980 C at 1 kbar and 800-900 C at 13 kbar, and develops a solution model to account for the nonideality of olivine in the binary system fosterite-fayalite and for ilmenite in the ternary system ilmenite-geikielite-hematite. A comparison with crystallization experiments shows that this thermometer may be safely extrapolated to temperatures higher than those of the exchange experiments.