INVERSE MODELING OF THERMAL HISTORIES WITH APATITE FISSION TRACKS

The problem of modelling thermal histories lies in the exploration of a time-temperature space, usually so broad, in order to identify the o ptimal paths. For overcoming this difficulty, many approaches were pro posed, using linear and non-linear optimisation algorithms. Generally, these approaches do not take into account the experimental data (fiss ion track age [FTA] and fission track length distribution [FTLD]) to b etter aim the search strategy. The present work shows that experimenta l data hold some precious information, for which it should be known ho w to extract it. In fact, it allows us to tighten the time-temperature space of search, supposed to contain the optimal solutions. A genetic algorithm is also used in this work to perform the search for these o ptimal solutions. ((C) Academie des sciences / Elsevier, Paris.)