Topography of the 660-km seismic discontinuity beneath Izu-Bonin: Implications for tectonic history and slab deformation

Abstract

We analyze the P wave codas of 65 paths from deep northwestern Pacific earthquakes recorded by arrays of stations in Germany, the western United States, India, and Turkmenistan. We identify a phase resulting from a near-source S-to-P conversion at a nearly horizontal discontinuity ranging in depth from 650 to 730 km, which we interpret as a thermally depressed spinel to perovskite and magnesiowüstite phase transition. We migrate these data along with 39 more from Wicks and Richards [1993], accounting for three-dimensional ray bending by the sloping discontinuity, to produce a high-resolution topography map of the 660-km discontinuity in the Izu-Bonin region. Assuming an equilibrium phase transition, we interpret the discontinuity depth in terms of local temperatures. The slab, if defined by a thermal anomaly greater than -400°K, is only about 100 km thick near 28°N suggesting the slab is penetrating into the lower mantle with little or no advective thickening. Farther to the north, however, cold material appears spread out over a wide region, consistent with the slab having been laid down flat on the 660-km discontinuity as the trench retreated 2000 km eastward. Both the narrow slab to the south and the flat-lying slab to the north are consistent with recent high-resolution tomographic images. The depression to 745 km along the arc is consistent with a maximum thermal anomaly of about 1100°K. Along the entire arc, the depression occurs directly beneath the deepest earthquakes, even where seismicity is dipping at 45° and stops at 450 km depth, suggesting that the slab steepens to a vertical dip at the deepest seismicity. This change to a vertical orientation suggests that the slab loses strength temporarily through a physical process which causes the seismicity to increase dramatically and then abruptly cease.