High-temperature cooling histories of migmatites from the High Himalayan Crystallines in Sikkim, India: rapid cooling unrelated to exhumation?

The High Himalayan Crystallines (HHCs) provide an excellent natural laboratory to study processes related to crustal melting, crustal differentiation, and the tectonic evolution of mountain belts because partial melting in these rocks occurred under well-defined tectonic boundary conditions (N-S collision of the Indian and the Eurasian plates) and the rocks have not been modified by subsequent metamorphic overprinting. We have used petrogenetic grids, kinetically constrained individual thermobarometry, pseudosection calculations, and reaction histories constrained by textural evidence to determine that the migmatites in the HHC of Sikkim attained peak P-T conditions of 750-800 degrees C, 9-12 kbar, followed by steep isothermal decompression to 3-5 kbar, and then isobaric cooling to similar to 600 degrees C. There may be a trend where rocks to the north [closer to the South Tibetan detachment system (STDS)] attained somewhat higher maximum pressures. The decompression may have been triggered by a reduction in density due to the production of melt (similar to 20 vol%); minor amounts of additional melt may have been produced in individual packages of rock during decompression itself, depending on the exact geometry of the P-T path and the bulk composition of the rock. The stalling of rapid, isothermal exhumation at depths of 10-18 km (3-5 kbar) is related to metamorphic reactions that occur in these rocks. Geospeedometry indicates that at least a two-stage cooling history is required to describe the compositional zoning in all garnets. Both of these stages are rapid (several 100' s degrees C/my between 800 and 600 degrees C, followed by several 10' s degrees C/my between 600 and 500 degrees C), but there appears to be a spatial discontinuity in cooling history: Rocks to the south (closer to main central thrust) cooled more slowly than rocks to the north (closer to STDS). The boundary between these domains coincides with the discontinuity in age found in the same area by Rubatto et al. (Contrib Mineral Petrol 165: 349-372, 2013). Combined with the information on petrologic phase relations, the data reveal the remarkable aspect that the rapid cooling and change of cooling rates all occurred after, rather than during, the rapid exhumation. This result underscores that high-temperature (e. g., >550 degrees C) cooling is a result of several processes in addition to exhumation and a one-to-one correlation of cooling and exhumation may sometimes be misplaced. Moreover, average cooling rates inferred from the closure temperatures of two isotopic systems should be interpreted judiciously in such nonlinearly cooling systems. While many aspects (e. g., isothermal decompression, isobaric cooling, duration of metamorphism, and cooling rates) of the pressure-temperature history inferred by us are consistent with the predictions of thermomechanical models that produce midcrustal channel flow, the occurrence of blocks with two different cooling histories within the HHC is not explained by currently available models. It is found that while exhumation may be initiated by surface processes such as erosion, the course of exhumation and its rate, at least below depths of similar to 15 km, is mostly controlled by a coupling between mechanical (density gain/loss) and chemical (metamorphic reactions) processes at depth.