1Allan H. Treiman, 2,3Jeremy W. Boyce, 4James P. Greenwood, 2John M. Eiler, 5Juliane Gross, 2Yunbin Guan, 2Chi Ma, 2Edward M. Stolper
American Mineralogist 101, 1596-1603 Link to Article [doi:10.2138/am-2016-5582]
1Lunar and Planetary Institute, 3600 Bay Area Boulevard, Houston, Texas 77058, U.S.A.
2Division of Geological & Planetary Sciences, Caltech, 1200 East California Boulevard, Pasadena, California 91125, U.S.A.
3Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, UCLA, California 90095, U.S.A.
4Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut 06459, U.S.A.
5Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Rutgers University, 610 Taylor Road, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854, U.S.A.
Copyright: The Mineralogical Society of America
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Apatite grains in lunar mare basalts contain hydrogen that ranges in D/H ratio by more than a factor of two. For most of these basalts, the D/H ratios in their apatite grains decrease with measures of the host basalts’ time spent at elevated temperature, specifically the Fe-Mg homogenization of their pyroxenes. Most basalts with homogeneous pyroxenes (i.e., with constant Fe/Mg ratio) have apatite grains with low D/H (δD ≈ −100‰), whereas most basalts with heterogeneous pyroxenes (i.e., varying or zoned Fe/Mg) have apatite with high D/H (δD up to ~ +1100‰). This relationship suggests that low D/H values were acquired during thermal processing, i.e., during Fe-Mg chemical equilibration, during or after emplacement. This light hydrogen is likely derived from solar wind implanted into the lunar regolith (with δD from −125‰ to −800‰), and could enter basalts either by assimilation of regolith or by vapor transport from regolith heated by the flow. If a basalt could not interact with regolith rich in solar wind (e.g., it was emplaced onto other fresh basalts), its apatite could retain a magmatic D/H signature. The high D/H component (in the apatites of unequilibrated basalts) is most reasonably that indigenous magmatic hydrogen, i.e., representing hydrogen in the basalt’s source mantles, or magmatic hydrogen that was residual after partial degassing of H2.