Master of Science / Department of Geology / Abdelmoneam Raef / Matthew W. Totten / This study examines an ovoid drainage feature southwest of Topeka, Kansas, whose discovery sparked a flurry of activity. Geomicrobial and surface gamma ray surveys indicated possible vertical migration of hydrocarbons, and a ground magnetic survey produced anomalies that resemble the profile of a crater. The area was dubbed the Echo Cliff structure and considered analogous to the Ames structure in Oklahoma, an Ordovician impact structure remarkable for significant hydrocarbon recovery. However, four wells drilled in the area were dry and abandoned. The Echo Cliff structure did yield further indications of its origins by the discovery of possible shocked quartz in drill cuttings from the Ordovician Simpson Group. Our study integrated well log analysis, geophysical modeling, and petrographic analysis to verify or refute the proposed identity of the Echo Cliff structure. Well logs from the area were used to create a structural and stratigraphic cross-section in Petrel® 2016. A gravity survey was conducted in the study area and combined with an aeromagnetic survey, donated by Applied Geophyics, Inc., to use as the basis for geophysical modeling within GM-SYS®. Finally, drill cuttings from the Simpson Group of two wells in the study area were mounted for thin sectioning. These thin sections were examined for planar deformation features, which are indicative of an impact event. The structural and stratigraphic cross sections indicated minimal variation in the subsurface, which is uncharacteristic of an impact event. The GM-SYS® geophysical models seem to indicate that variations in the topography of the Precambrian basement and faulting from the Bolivar-Mansfield Tectonic Zone are responsible for the geophysical anomalies and possibly the current drainage pattern of the study area. Finally, no planar deformation features were observed in any of the examined thin sections. Therefore, there is currently no evidence in support of the claim that the Echo Cliff structure is an impact structure.

In the northern part of Swedish Caledonides, north of Lake Torneträsk is a 7 km long exposure of a breccia layer. The layer thins westwards and eastwards from the central part where it is up to 27 m thick. It is called the Vakkejokk Breccia after the type section. The breccia has been described in literature since about a century, but its origin is enigmatic. The breccia layer is since the summer of 2012 investigated by three geologists specialized in impact craters, Paleozoic sediments, and the Caledonian orogeny. They put forward evidence for the breccia being formed by a hypervelocity impact during the Lower Cambrian at approximately 520 Ma (Ormö et al. 2017). At that time the target area was a shallow epicontinental sea that surrounded the mainly peneplanized continent Baltica. An impact into the sea is known to generate tsunami waves as well as resurge deposits when the water brings ejected and rip-up material back into the crater. Ormö et al. (2017) suggest the top part of the Vakkejokk Breccia to include such resurge deposits. The depositional marine environment is also known to rapidly protect an impact crater from further erosion. It is possible that only the topographic rim of the Vakkejokk crater was eroded during the millions of years it may have taken before the crater was covered by younger sediments. About 100 m.y. after the formation, it was completely covered by overthrust nappes during the Caledonian orogeny, when Baltica and Laurentia collided. The crater itself is not exposed today, merely parts of what is thought to be the ejecta layer and resurge deposits. This Bachelor of Science project aimed to investigate the putative resurge deposits to learn more about the process of formation and the provenance in the target of the clasts in the deposits. This was carried out by three short drillcores through the resurge deposit part of the Vakkejokk Breccia layer. The place to drill the boreholes was chosen at an outcrop which is proximal to the putative hidden crater. The retrieved drillcores were cut longitudinally, then polished and photographed in high resolution. Each core was then analyzed in an image analysis software with respect to clast granulometry and lithology. To the results are presented as graphs showing clast size, size sorting, clast shape, of the relative amounts of different lithologies and the matrix content. The results are discussed with respect to well-documented analogue marine-target craters

La technique laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS), qui consiste à exploiter le spectre du plasma induit par laser sur la surface de l'échantillon pour déterminer sa composition élémentaire, a été inventée il y a plus de 50 ans. Récemment, elle connaît un développement rapide, poussée par des besoins d'application dans différents domaines, citons par exemple, exploration océanique, détection de pollution environnementale, ou contrôle de procédés industriels. Cette technique utilise le plasma généré par ablation laser comme la source spectroscopique. La particularité de LIBS est que le plasma induit par laser présente un comportement transitoire et une distribution spatiale qui ne soit pas uniforme en général. Bien que la détection résolue en temps puisse améliorer considérablement la performance de LIBS, surtout pour le procédé de LIBS autocalibration avec une meilleure détermination de température, l'évolution temporelle du plasma est souvent corrélée avec sa morphologie et son inhomogénéité spatiale. L'étude de la morphologie ainsi que la structure interne du plasma avec l'évolution pendant l'expansion de celui-ci dans un gaz ambiant, représente donc un point crucial pour l'optimisation du plasma entant qu'une source spectroscopique. Suite à la thèse de Qianli Ma réalisée dans notre équipe et soutenue en décembre 2012, qui a été notamment consacrée à l'étude de l'effet de la longueur d'onde du laser d'ablation sur les propriétés et l'évolution du plasma dans un gaz ambiant d'argon, la présente thèse s'intéresse aux effets des autres paramètres, la fluence du laser d'ablation, la durée de l'impulsion, et les différents gaz ambiants (argon ou air), sur la morphologie et la structure du plasma. Par ailleurs, les mécanismes microscopiques conduisant à l'onde de détonation soutenue par laser dans argon ou dans l'air sont aussi étudiés. Lors du refroidissant du plasma dans l'air, des oxydes métalliques peuvent se former. L'étude de la formation de molécules, au-delà de l'intérêt pratique pour la LIBS, fournit également un aperçu de la cinétique chimique dans le plasma, ce qui est intéressant pour l'étude de la transformation du plasma en phase gazeuse à une phase recondensée de nanoparticules / Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) has been invented for more than 50 years, which analyzes the spectrum of the laser-induced plasma to determine the elemental composition of the ablated sample. Recently, LIBS technique has been well developed and applied in different domains, for example oceanic exploration, pollution monitoring in the environment. LIBS uses the ablation plasma as a light source that contains the elemental composition information of the sample. However, the laser-induced plasma exhibits a transient behavior. Although time-resolved and gated detection can greatly improve the performance of the LIBS technique especially that of calibration-free LIBS (CF-LIBS) with a better determination of plasma temperature, the temporal evolution of the plasma is correlated to its morphology and its spatial inhomogeneity. The determination of the morphology as well as the internal structure of the plasma together with their evolution during plasma expansion into the ambient gas is therefore crucial for the optimization of the use of ablation plasma as a spectroscopic emission source. Evolutions of the morphology and the internal structure of the ablation plasma are considered as the consequence of its hydrodynamic expansion into the ambient gas. Following the thesis of Qianli Ma which has studied the effect of laser wavelength on the behavior of the plasma induced in an ambient gas of argon, the present thesis has used the same diagnostic techniques (time- and space-resolved emission spectroscopy and fast spectroscopic images) together with 1064 nm ns laser pulse ablation of a target of aluminum to investigate the effects of other parameters, such as the fluence and the duration of laser pulse, the effect of different ambient gases (argon and air), on the morphology and internal structure of the plasma. Furthermore, in order to understand the effects of these parameters on the properties of the plasma, the microscopic mechanisms during post ablation and the propagation of the plasma are also studied. While the plasma cools down in air, molecules are formed, AlO for instance. So the thesis also studied the condition for the formation of the molecules in the plasma. Beyond the practical interest of this study for LIBS, it provides also insights to the kinetics of the AlO molecule formation in laserinduced plasma

As one of the most common minerals in crustal rocks, quartz has been widely used as an indicator for shock metamorphism. Shocked quartz is found in the Chicxulub impact crater, an impact crater that has been linked to the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction ~66 million years ago. The microstructural deformation features found in the shocked quartz do not form randomly, and their orientation provides a better understanding of the impact cratering process. At present, there are no studies of EBSD data analysis of shocked quartz from Chicxulub. We investigated six thin sections from two samples from the M0077A borehole in the lower peak ring of the Chicxulub impact crater, using the Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM)-EBSD technique. Both samples consist of shocked granite, with a significant amount of quartz.  Therefore, this study investigates the crystallographic preferred orientation (CPO) of shocked quartz and predicts the seismic velocities and anisotropy, based on the EBSD data. We carried out the analysis of EBSD data by using the MATLAB-based MTEX toolbox that can perform CPO analysis from pole figure plots and the prediction of seismic properties of minerals based on the Voigt-Reuss-Hill effective medium method. Although acquiring the EBSD data from these samples is challenging, leading to the lack of data measured, we found out that the prediction of P wave seismic velocity is in good agreement with other recent studies conducted in the same area. The range of predicted P wave velocities is 5.5-6.5 km/s with anisotropy of 8-15%. The actual observed laboratory measurements and in-situ seismic measurements are considerably smaller than this velocity range because our calculations do not incorporate pores or take microcracks into account.  A likely explanation for the large variability of anisotropy in shocked quartz is the relatively few mapped grains with EBSD, which would influence the CPO and lead to high predicted seismic anisotropy. Considering a greaternumber of grains in the CPO analysis, the CPO is reduced, and seismic anisotropy becomes smaller.