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Lay 1986
Lay, T. (1986). Evidence of a lower mantle shear velocity discontinuity in S and sS phases. Geophysical Research Letters 13: doi: 10.1029/GL013i013p01493. issn: 0094-8276.

Teleseismic recordings of direct S and sS body wave phases, and their core-reflected counterparts ScS and sScS, from intermediate and deep focus earthquakes are used to analyze the lowermost mantle shear velocity structure beneath Alaska. A model with a 2.75% shear velocity increase 280 km above the core-mantle boundary accurately matches waveform complexities in both the S and sS wavetrains. Variations in source depth produce systematic shifts in the timing of the triplication arrivals between the S and sS travel time branches that are readily observed in long-period WWSSN tangential component recordings. The systematic range- and depth-dependence of the observed shifts are well-predicted by the discontinuity model, and preclude explanations of the waveform complexity as resulting from multiple ruptures at the source, receiver reverberations, or near-source scattering from slab structure.

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Geophysical Research Letters
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American Geophysical Union
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