Evidence for a thick and localized ultra low shear velocity zone at the base of the mantle beneath the central Pacific

Prominent postcursors to S/Sdiff waves with delays as large as 26 s are observed in Northern America for Papua New Guinea events. These waves sample the northern side of the Pacific large low shear velocity province revealed by global shear velocity (Vs) tomographic models. The emergence of the postcursors strongly depends on the epicenter-to-station azimuth, indicating that the waveforms are, in general, strongly affected by 3-dimensional (3D) heterogeneities. We limit our focus to an azimuthal range around 60°, measured clockwise from north at the epicenter, where the records show a relatively small azimuthal variation, suggesting a relatively small 3D effect there. In this azimuthal range we attempt 2D structural modelling along the great circle plane towards stations in southern US. First, we use a 2D ray theory to search for a range of models, which generate a postcursor to the main Sdiff phase with a delay time consistent with the observations. Then, for some typical models, we calculated waveforms at periods down to 5 s using the spectral element method. We obtained several models that provide synthetic waveforms in a fair agreement with the observations. The result shows that two types of low Vs regions are required to explain the data. One is a broad and weak anomaly region with a Vs reduction of 5% or so, constituting a part of the Pacific large low shear velocity province at the base of the mantle. The other is a laterally localized strong anomaly region with a more than 25% reduction of Vs within a thickness of at least 80 km and a width on the order of 500 km.