Joint inversion of body wave receiver function and Rayleigh wave ellipticity

Abstract:

In recent years, surface wave dispersion has been used to image lithospheric structure jointly with receiver function, or Rayleigh wave ellipticity (Julia et al., 2000; Lin et al., 2012). Because surface wave dispersion is the total propagation effect of the travel path, the joint inversion relies on dense seismic arrays or high seismicity to obtain local velocity structure. However, both receiver function and Rayleigh wave ellipticity are single station measurements with localized sensitivities and could be combined for joint inversion naturally. In this study we explored the feasibility of the joint inversion of Rayleigh wave ellipticity and receiver function. We performed sensitivity tests with forward modeling, and found that the receiver function is sensitive to sharp velocity interfaces but shows weak sensitivity to long wavelength structure, almost complementary to Rayleigh wave ellipticity. Therefore, joint inversion with two single-station measurements provides tighter constraints on the velocity structure beneath the seismic station. A joint inversion algorithm based on the Fast Simulated Annealing method is developed to invert Rayleigh wave ellipticity and receiver function for the lithospheric structure. Application of the algorithm to the Indian Craton and the Williston Basin in the United States demonstrates its effectiveness in reducing the non-uniqueness of the inversion. However, the joint inversion is not sensitive to average crustal velocity, suggesting the need to combine surface wave dispersion, receiver function and Rayleigh wave ellipticity to more accurately resolve the velocity structure.

Reference

Juliá, J., C. Ammon, R. Herrmann, and A. Correig, 2000. Joint inversion of receiver function and surface wave dispersion observations, Geophys. J. Int., 143(1), 99–112.

Lin F.C., Schmandt B. and Tsai V.C., 2012. Joint inversion of Rayleigh wave phase velocity and ellipticity using USArray: constraining velocity and density structure in the upper crust. Geophys. Res. Lett. 39.