Tibor Gasparik - Phase Diagrams

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Ph.D. in Experimental Petrology, 1981

Ph.D. Advisor: Professor Donald H. Lindsley

Post-Doctoral Advisor: Professor Robert C. Newton

Welcome to my Web site!

For over 20 years, since 1979, I have been conducting experimental studies at high pressures and high temperatures, using first a piston-cylinder apparatus and then later on, since 1986, a split-sphere multi-anvil apparatus. I use an electron microprobe to analyze the experimental products. My main research objective is systematic investigation of phase relations in simple and more complex chemical systems most relevant to Earth, with the main focus on the major elements - the NCFMAS system and its subsystems (Na2O-CaO-FeO-MgO-Al2O3-SiO2). I use this information to help me in deciphering the mineral and chemical composition of the Earth’s deep mantle, its structure, and its evolution with time. The results from 1000 piston-cylinder and close to 700 multi-anvil experiments have been published in over 100 abstracts for various national and international science meetings, and in 70 peer-reviewed articles. I have also summarized these results and the results from phase equilibrium studies at high pressures and temperatures, carried out mainly in the second half of the last century by many other experimental petrologists, in a book titled: “Phase Diagrams for Geoscientists: An Atlas of the Earth’s Interior.” The book was published by Springer-Verlag on March 18, 2003, and can be ordered here from Springer-Verlag or from Amazon.com. The book has 462 pages and 288 figures, from which 243 are calculated phase diagrams. This is the largest published collection of calculated phase diagrams for the chemical systems most relevant to Earth. This is also the first time that the phase relations at the relatively low pressures of the lithospheric mantle, mainly applicable to the experimental thermobarometry of metamorphic rocks and mantle xenoliths, are seamlessly integrated with the phase relations of the sublithospheric upper mantle and the uppermost lower mantle, primarily applicable to inclusions in diamond and schocked meteorites. The “Atlas” would be a truly invaluable guide in a journey to the core. Use the first of the following links to view color versions of some of these phase diagrams and other figures from the book. I hope you will buy it, like it and use it.

Phase Diagrams and Other Figures
Model for the Earth’s Mantle
Contents
List of Abstracts
List of Articles
Other References
Subject Index
Responses
Discoveries
The Evidence