Upper boundary of the Pacific plate subducting beneath Hokkaido, Japan, estimated from ScSp phase

Three-dimensional geometry of the upper boundary of the Pacific plate subducting beneath Hokkaido, Japan, was obtained using the ScSp phase: the phase converted from ScS (S wave reflected at the core-mantle boundary) to P wave at the plate boundary. Taking the advantage of a dense seismic network, "Hi-net", recently deployed across the Japanese islands, we applied several seismic array analyses to the recorded waveform data for a large nearby deep earthquake, in order to enhance very weak ScSp signals in the original records. At first, we set up five blocks for the region in plate dip directions. After aligning the travel times of ScS and stacking seismograms among stations in a given sub-block perpendicular to each dip direction, we searched for the optimal plate model (i.e., two-dimensional geometry of the upper boundary) for each block. The model was parameterized by seven depth grids, and seismograms were stacked based on the travel time of ScSp as a time lag of each sub-block, so that the optimal model would yield the maximum spectral energy of ScSp after stacking. This model parameter search was conducted, using ray tracings of ScSp with a reference velocity model and a non-linear inversion scheme (Neighbourhood Algorithm). The optimal model of each block was combined each other by cubic spline interpolation, in order to construct an overall three-dimensional geometry of the upper boundary of the plate. Next, we performed the frequency-wavenumber (f-k) spectral analysis to refine the above result. Assuming each station as a reference point, we made beam output from records of its adjacent stations as a function of wavenumber vector (k(x),k(y)) and frequency. The peak of its power spectrum was considered to represent the wavenumber vector of ScSp, that is, azimuth of arrival and slowness, so that we can estimate the position and depth of the corresponding ScS-ScSp conversion. In the frequency range from 0.5 to 1.5 Hz, we could estimate the conversion points for 21 stations or hypothetical arrays, and revised the geometry of the upper boundary obtained by the non-linear stacking approach in the previous step. The final plate model was compared with the distribution of intraplate earthquakes in the Pacific plate. This comparison clearly reveals that the upper seismic zone merges with the lower from 150 to 200 km in depth, deviating systematically away from the upper boundary where the boundary is slightly bumped in a convex manner. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.