Kirchhoff synthetics for seismic reflections and diving waves in two dimensions and application to the D" layer

The Kirchhoff-Helmholtz (KH) integration has been used to model the reflected and the diving waves from an interface with a positive velocity gradient. The modelling is carried out for a spherical boundary and for a sinusoidal topography with a long-scale wavelength.
An artefact, which is a major problem in modelling the seismic response using the KH integration, has been reduced by introducing a Hilbert transform sign manipulation. Cleaner synthetic seismograms with correct amplitudes have been produced by this method. A discretization in larger surface elements has been made possible by introducing a smoothing factor that suppresses the noise that normally follows the constructed signal if a large element size is taken.     

Blockage of regional seismic waves by the Teisseyre-Tornquist zone

During the Group of Scientific Experts Technical Test (GSETT, second experiment, 22 April-2 June 1991), several hundred seismic events were located in Europe. Associating these events with the detecting stations-altogether 28 European stations including seven arrays participated in the GSETT-2 experiment-clearly shows that the Teisseyre-Tornquist Zone (TTZ) influences the propagation of regional seismic phases. Large explosions in the Bay of Gdańsk, for example, were observed by the well-established Scandinavian arrays'NORSAR (Δ 830km) and ARCESS (Δ 1650km), but not by the Polish station KSP (Δ 470km) nor by the new highly sensitive GERESS array (Δ 750km), both situated south-west of the TTZ. For events in central Europe with comparable magnitudes, we observe a similar increase of the detection threshold at stations located north-east of the TTZ in Scandinavia. to explain these observations, the wave propagation of P_n and P_g perpendicular to the TTZ was modelled for a profile from the Estonian/Russian border region to GERESS with Gaussian-beam seismograms. Published crustal and uppermost mantle models for Poland and for Europe were used as a starting point for developing a model of the TTZ. the observations cannot be explained only by a graben-like crustal structure with a jump in Moho depth from 30km to 50km. to defocus the seismic energy, the TTZ as a structural anomaly between eastern and western Europe must reach down into the upper mantle to a depth of at least about 200 km. the proposed model has such a deep-reaching root of the TTZ.     

The mean transmission properties of a fault with imperfect facial contact

A model of a fault where the two faces do not exactly conform is characterized by a distribution of approximately circular contacts; elsewhere, the faces are stress-free. This contrasts with most earlier models, which have assumed the contact geometry to be equivalent to a plane distribution of approximately circular cracks. The contact regions in the present model are taken to be sparsely distributed, and averaged interface conditions are derived that are accurate to second order. At lowest order they agree with established formulae for the normal stiffness of non-conforming surfaces. These averaged, or mean, conditions are expected to hold at wavelengths long compared with the radii and spacing distance of the contact points. Unsurprisingly, they are equivalent to the continuity conditions for a thin elastic layer whose properties are given here in terms of the parameters of the contact surface.     

Generation of the teleseismic P-wave coda from Aleutian earthquakes

We investigate large-amplitude phases arriving in the P -wave coda of broad-band seismograms from teleseisms recorded by the Gräfenberg array, the German Regional Seismic Network and the Global Seismic Network. The data set consists of all events m _b≤ 5.6 from the Aleutian arc between 1977 and 1992. Earthquakes with large-amplitude coda waves correlate with the presence of oceanic crust in the source region. The amplitudes sometimes approach those of the P wave, much larger than predicted by theory. Modelling indicates that phases in the P -wave coda cannot be P -wave multiples beneath the source and receiver, or underside reflections, which precede PP , from upper-mantle discontinuities. Among the events, seismograms are very similar, where the arrival times of the unusual phases agree approximately with the predicted times of S -to- P conversions from the upper-mantle discontinuities under the source. Because the large-amplitude phases in the P -wave coda have little, if any, dependence on event depth and have predominantly an SV -wave radiation pattern towards the receiver, we suggest that they originate as SV and/or Rayleigh waves and are enhanced by lateral heterogeneity and multipathing from the subducting Aleutian slab.