The Influence of Water on Seismic Wave Speeds and Attenuation in the Upper Mantle: an update from the Laboratory

Abstract:

A fine-grained synthetic olivine (Fo90) polycrystal, doped with ~0.04 wt. % TiO2, has been prepared with ~70 wt. ppm H2O accommodated in the remarkably stable Ti-clinohumite defect typical of natural olivines from the Earth’s generally water-undersaturated upper mantle (Berry et al., 2005). A precision-ground specimen of this material, sleeved in Pt tubing within a mild-steel jacket, was tested in torsional forced oscillation at seismic frequencies (mHz-Hz) and temperatures to 1200 °C, under 200 MPa confining pressure. The shear modulus was observed to decrease systematically with increasing oscillation period and temperature, accompanied by monotonically increasing dissipation, which are characteristic of absorption band or high-temperature-background behaviour. In a previous preliminary report, the new data were compared with the model of Jackson and Faul (Phys. Earth Planet. Interiors, 2010) for a suite of essentially anhydrous Ti-free olivine polycrystals, evaluated at the 25 μm grain size of the hydrous titaniferous olivine specimen, showing that the latter is vastly more dissipative than its anhydrous equivalent (by an order of magnitude at 1200 °C) and correspondingly lower in shear modulus. The results of additional experiments now better constrain the mechanical behaviour of the enclosing Pt sleeve and allow direct comparison with data for an anhydrous titaniferous olivine of comparable grain size. The latest results confirm a very strong influence of water on seismic wave attenuation, even under the water-undersaturated conditions expected to prevail in the Earth’s upper mantle.