The slant-stacklet transform and its application to teleseismic PcP-P data recorded at large aperture seismic array

Abstract:

In most high-resolution studies of the Earth's Deep Interior, the limited amount and uneven distribution of high-quality observations of short-period teleseismic body waves are major obstacles. Dense broadband seismic networks help to overcome major challenges of low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the target phases and of signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) of other (often stronger) mantle phases when the slowness difference is large enough. Intuitive delay-and-sum (i.e. slant-stack) approaches are routinely applied to combine data of many spatially close stations to improve data quality. Alternative methods developed in the context of image processing, such as Radon transform-based methods, have proven useful in exploration seismology to facilitate enhancement and separation of signals according to their slowness and time of arrival. In this spirit, we have introduced the slant-stacklet transform to define coherency-guided filters able to exploit signals that would have been otherwise rejected because of low SNR or SIR. As an illustration, this method allows us to dramatically increase the amount of high-quality PcP observations using dense arrays in North America and Japan, sampling Central America, the western Pacific and Alaska/western Canada with unprecedented resolution and accuracy. After mantle corrections, the main signal left in these regions is relatively long wavelength in these regions of fast velocities around the Pacific, except at the western border of the Pacific large-low shear-velocity province (LLSVP) where we observe a rapid reduction of Vp velocity over a distance of about 10˚. This is just one step to further increase lowermost mantle imaging using P waves, much more information from PcP and other complementary signals (e.g. PdP) around the globe are needed to resolve volumetric structure, topography of the core-mantle boundary and D” discontinuity, and the trade-offs between them, in order to improve our understanding of the interaction between the earth's mantle and core.