Subducting slabs stagnant in the mantle transition zone

Abstract

The P wave velocity structure beneath the Western Pacific is found from the International Seismological Center first arrival data. Special attention was paid to the deep structure beneath the Wadati‐Benioff zone. We discretized the whole mantle into blocks with finer blocks in the region of interest to obtain the velocities of all the blocks. This way of discretization minimizes a problem with tomographic studies of regional scale: difficulty in making corrections for the effects outside the region of interest. Our solution is iterative with the alternate step of the relocation of earthquakes, using the whole mantle model of Inoue et al. (1990) as a starting model. A first‐order smoothness constraint was imposed to suppress the possible fluctuation of the solution around the initial model. The essential result depends little on whether the reference spherical model is smooth or discontinuous near 400‐ and 670‐km depths. We examined the resolution by calculating the resolving kernels for selected blocks and by reconstructing the checkerboard test patterns of velocity perturbation and the test structures of subducting lithosphere. The resolution is depth dependent but in general good enough to see the slab configuration beneath the Southern Kurile‐Japan‐Izu‐Bonin arcs and the Java arc. It is relatively poor beneath the Northern Kurile and Mariana arcs. The seismic image of subducting slab beneath the Southern Kurile to Bonin arcs bends to subhorizontal near the leading edge of the Wadati‐Benioff zone and extends continentward over a distance of more than 1000 km. The subhorizontal portion of the slab connects a high‐velocity blob to the bottom that reaches a depth of at least 800 km across the 670‐km discontinuity under the Japan arc. Although the image of the Java slab directly penetrates the 670‐km discontinuity, it then bends to a shallow dip with a considerable spread, reaching a depth of about 1200 km. These results suggest that descending slabs of lithosphere in the Western Pacific tend to be stagnant in the transition zone under a subtle control of the 670‐km discontinuity. Although stagnant slab materials eventually descend into the lower mantle, they no longer maintain their original configuration below the 670‐km discontinuity.