Characterizing Earthquake Rupture Properties Using Peak High-Frequency Offset

Abstract:

Teleseismic array back-projection (BP) of high frequency (~1Hz) seismic waves has been recently applied to image the aftershock sequence of the Tohoku-Oki earthquake. The BP method proves to be effective in capturing early aftershocks that are difficult to be detected due to the contamination of the mainshock coda wave. Furthermore, since the event detection is based on the identification of the local peaks in time series of the BP power, the resulting event location corresponds to the peak high-frequency energy rather than the hypocenter. In this work, we show that the comparison between the BP-determined catalog and conventional phase-picking catalog provides estimates of the spatial and temporal offset between the hypocenter and the peak high-frequency radiation. We propose to measure this peak high-frequency shift of global earthquakes between M4.0 to M7.0. We average the BP locations calibrated by multiple reference events to minimize the uncertainty due to the variation of 3D path effects. In our initial effort focusing on the foreshock and aftershock sequence of the 2014 Iquique earthquake, we find systematic shifts of the peak high-frequency energy towards the down-dip direction. We find that the amount of the shift is a good indication of rupture length, which scales with the earthquake magnitude. Further investigations of the peak high frequency offset may provide constraints on earthquake source properties such as rupture directivity, rupture duration, rupture speed, and stress drop.