9706062 Heizler This grant provides $49,055 as one-half support of the costs of acquiring a UV laser ablation system for the Ar/Ar geochronology/thermochronology lab at New Mexico Tech. A UV laser will allow these PI's to conduct in situ 40-Ar/39-Ar analyses on spot sizes as small as 50 microns, allowing for higher resolution studies than currently achievable with their CO2 laser used for step-heating and total fusion analyses. The use of a UV laser coupled with rare gas mass spectrometery has a great deal of potential for dating and geochemical analyses of individual fluid inclusions, dating alteration phases and overgrowths in economic mineral deposits and for studies of micro- scale Ar diffusion systematics and undoubtedly will be heavily used by these productive PI's. ***
