Origin of the Low Velocity Zone

Abstract:

The origin of the low velocity zone is still not well understood, although the mechanisms responsible have important implications for the thermal evolution of the Earth and the origin of plate tectonics. The null hypothesis (a geotherm consisting of an adiabat and a conductive thermal boundary layer, and free of melt, water, and attenuation) accounts for many properties of the low velocity zone, including the depth at which the minimum velocity occurs and its variation with age, but the value of the minimum velocity is greater than that seen by seismology (the velocity deficit). Attenuation, as found in global seismic attenuation tomography, can explain much of the velocity deficit, but still leaves two features of the boundaries of the low velocity zone unexplained: an apparently abrupt upper boundary to the low velocity (G discontinuity, sometimes also associated with the "lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary"), and a high gradient zone beneath in which velocity increases with depth very rapidly. Here we show that by adding to the null hypothesis attenuation as recently measured experimentally, the entire velocity deficit is explained. Moreover, the upper boundary of the low velocity zone is remarkably abrupt, although possibly less sharp than receiver function analyses indicate. The high gradient zone is explained by variations in the entropy with depth, i.e. cooling with increasing depth at depths beneath the low velocity zone, a property of the geotherm that is expected on the basis of mantle convection simulations.