Crystallization of silicate magmas deciphered using crystal size distributions

The remoteness and inhospitable nature of natural silicate magma make it exceedingly difficult to study in its natural setting deep beneath volcanoes. Although laboratory experiments involving molten rock are routinely performed, it is the style and nature of crystallization under natural conditions that is important to understand. This is where the crystal size distributions (CSD) method becomes fundamentally valuable. Just as chemical thermodynamics offers a quantitative macroscopic means of investigating chemical processes that occur at the atomic level, crystal size distribution theory quantitatively relates the overall observed spectrum of crystal sizes to both the kinetics of crystallization and the physical processes affecting the population of crystals themselves. Petrography, which is the qualitative study of rock textures, is the oldest, most comprehensively developed, and perhaps most beautiful aspect of studying magmatic rocks. It is the ultimate link to the kinetics of crystallization and the integrated space-time history of evolution of every magma. CSD analysis offers a quantitative inroad to unlocking and quantifying the observed textures of magmatic rocks. Perhaps the most stunning feature of crystal-rich magmatic rocks is that the constituent crystal populations show smooth and often quasi-linear log-normal distributions of negative slope when plotted as population density against crystal size. These patterns are decipherable using CSD theory, and this method has proven uniquely valuable in deciphering the kinetics of crystallization of magma. The CSD method has been largely developed in chemical engineering by Randolph and Larson,(1,2) among many others, for use in understanding industrial crystallization processes, and its introduction to natural magmatic systems began in 1988. The CSD approach is particularly valuable in its ease of application to complex systems. It is an aid to classical kinetic theory by being, in its purest form, free of any atomistic assumptions regarding crystal nucleation and growth. Yet the CSD method provides kinetic information valuable to understanding the connection between crystal nucleation and growth and the overall cooling and dynamics of magma. It offers a means of investigating crystallization in dynamic systems, involving both physical and chemical processes, independent of an exact kinetic theory. The CSD method applied to rocks shows a systematic and detailed history of crystal nucleation and growth that forms the foundation of a comprehensive and general model of magma solidification.