Source complexity and the physical mechanism of the 2015 Mw 7.9 Bonin Island earthquake

Abstract:

The 30 May 2015 Mw 7.9 Bonin Island earthquake is the largest instrument-recorded deep-focus earthquake in the Izu-Bonin arc. It occurred approximately 100 km deeper than the previous seismicity, in the region unlikely to be within the core of the subducting Izu-Bonin slab. The earthquake provides an unprecedented opportunity to understand the unexpected occurrence of such isolated deep earthquakes. Multiple source inversion of the P, SH, pP and sSH phases and a novel fully three-dimensional back-projection of P and pP phases are applied to study the coseismic source process. The subevents locations and short-period energy radiations both show a L-shape bilateral rupture propagating initially in the SW direction then in the NW direction with an average rupture speed of 2.0 km/s. The decrease of focal depth on the NW branch suggests that the rupture is consistent with a single sub-horizontal plane inferred from the GCMT solution. The multiple source inversion further indicates slight variation of the focal strikes of the sub-events with the curvature of the subducting Izu-Bonin slab. The rupture is confined within an area of 20 km x 35 km, rather compact compared with the shallow earthquake of similar magnitude. The earthquake is of high stress drop on the order of 100 MPa and a low seismic efficiency of 0.19, indicating large frictional heat dissipation. The only aftershock is 11 km to the east of the mainshock hypocenter and 3 km away from the centroid of the first sub-event. Analysis of the regional tomography and nearby seismicity suggests that the earthquake may occur at the edge/periphery of the bending slab and is unlikely to be within the “cold” metastable olivine wedge. Our results suggest the spontaneous nucleation of the thermally induced shear instability is a possible mechanism for such isolated deep earthquakes.