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Castle & Creager 1999
Castle, J.C. and Creager, K.C. (1999). A steeply dipping discontinuity in the lower mantle beneath Izu-Bonin. Journal of Geophysical Research 104: doi: 10.1029/1999JB900011. issn: 0148-0227.

We analyze the coda of teleseismic P waves to deterministically map seismic scatterers in a 1000 km on-a-side cube beneath the Izu-Bonin trench by migrating and stacking waveforms. This method was applied to several hundred short-period vertical-component western United States seismometer recordings of 17 deep-focus Izu-Bonin earthquakes. Except for isolated arrivals, the midmantle appears devoid of sharp discontinuities. S-to-P conversions at the 660-km discontinuity generated the largest signals; the 410-km discontinuity occasionally generated signals. Horizontal discontinuities poorly explain other signals; however, S-to-P conversions generated at a nearly north-south trending, steeply dipping discontinuity at 30 ¿N, 145 ¿E, and 1000 km beneath and parallel to the Izu-Bonin trench explain most additional signals. Observed coherent S-to-P conversions of 2-s period waves limit the width of a gradient zone to <7 km. Compressional and shear tomographic models <Grand et al., 1997; Widiyantoro, 1997> image a fast velocity structure at a similar depth and orientation extending southward from the middle of the Izu-Bonin trench to the Mariana trench. We interpret the sharp scattering surface as a subducted crust and the tomographically imaged structure as the cold thermal anomaly associated with an ancient slab. We observe neither the deep scatterer nor high-seismic wavespeeds north of 32 ¿N. This feature is as much as 800 km east of recent deep earthquakes near 30 ¿N and is at a latitude where the slab appears to extend horizontally on the 660-km discontinuity to the west of the seismicity. We suggest that this deep slab fragment was carried north 500--1000 km owing to oblique subduction. In this scenario, it would be associated with the near vertical subduction at the Mariana subduction zone. ¿ 1999 American Geophysical Union

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Abstract

Keywords
Seismology, Tectonophysics, Earth's interior—composition and state, Seismology, Core and mantle
Journal
Journal of Geophysical Research
http://www.agu.org/journals/jb/
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
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