  Fission-track annealing models aim to extrapolate laboratory annealing
kinetics to the geological timescale for application to geological studies.
Model trends empirically capture the mechanisms of track length reduction. To
facilitate the interpretation of the fission-track annealing trends, a
formalism, based on quantities already in use for the study of physicochemical
processes, is developed and allows for the calculation of rate constants,
Arrhenius activation energies, and transitivity functions for the fission-track
annealing models. These quantities are then obtained for the parallel
Arrhenius, parallel curvilinear, fanning Arrhenius, and fanning curvilinear
models, fitted with Durango apatite data. Parallel models showed to be
consistent with a single activation energy mechanism and a reaction order model
of order ~ -4. However, the fanning curvilinear model is the one that results
in better fits laboratory data and predictions in better agreement with
geological evidence. Fanning models seem to describe a more complex picture,
with concurrent recombination mechanisms presenting activation energies varying
with time and temperature, and the reaction order model seems not to be the
most appropriate. It is apparent from the transitivity analysis that the
dominant mechanisms described by the fanning models are classical (not quantum)
energy barrier transitions.
