Frequency-dependent rupture process of the 2011 Mw 9.0 Tohoku Earthquake: Comparison of short-period P wave backprojection images and broadband seismic rupture models

By K. Koper, A. Hutko, T. Lay, C. Ammon, Hiroo Kanamori. 2011

205 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The frequency-dependent rupture process of the 11 March 2011 Mw 9.0 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku Earthquake is examined using backprojection (BP) imaging with teleseismic short-period (~1 s) P waves, and finite faulting models (FFMs) of the seismic moment and slip distributions inverted from broadband (>3 s) teleseismic P waves, Rayleigh waves and regional continuous GPS ground motions. Robust features of the BPs are initial down-dip propagation of the short-period energy source with a slow rupture speed (~1 km/s), followed by faster (2–3 km/s) rupture that progresses southwestward beneath the Honshu coastline. The FFMs indicate initial slow down-dip expansion of the rupture followed by concentrated long-period radiation up-dip of the hypocenter, then southwestward expansion of the rupture. We explore whether these differences correspond to real variations in energy release over the fault plane or represent uncertainties in the respective approaches. Tests of the BP results involve (1) comparisons with backprojection of synthetic P waves generated for the FFMs, and (2) comparisons of backprojection locations for aftershocks with corresponding NEIC and JMA locations. The data indicate that the down-dip environment radiates higher relative levels of short-period radiation than the up-dip regime for this great earthquake, consistent with large-scale segmentation of the frictional properties of the megathrust.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Geophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b0fc189f8f81151a90675072bedadd0c5135636b

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Citations in the corpus

A rupture model of the 2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku Earthquake (2011, background): “Koper et al. (2011) discuss the details of what appears to be a compound rupture with large slow slip and predominantly long period seismic radiation updip and conventional slip with broadband seismic wave radiation downdip.”
Detailed rupture imaging of the 25 April 2015 Nepal earthquake using teleseismic P waves (2015, methodology): “…Ishii et al. [2005] for the 2004 Sumatra earthquake, the backprojection method has been widely applied to large earthquake imaging, most often using regional arrays such as Hi-net or USArray [e.g., Meng et al., 2011; Wang et al., 2012; Meng et al., 2012; Koper et al., 2011; Kiser and Ishii, 2012].”
Numerical Simulation of the 2011 Tohoku Tsunami Based on a New Transient FEM Co-seismic Source: Comparison to Far- and Near-Field Observations (2013, background): “…model of the subduction zone (e.g., DZIEWONSKI and ANDERSON’s (1981) spherical layered PREM seismological model; see, e.g., AMMON et al. 2011; Geospatial Information Authority of Japan, 2011; KOPER et al. 2011; PARARAS-CARAYANNIS 2011; POLLITZ et al. 2011; OZAWA et al. 2011; SHAO et al. 2011).”
Compressive sensing of the Tohoku‐Oki Mw 9.0 earthquake: Frequency‐dependent rupture modes (2011, background): “…in the high‐frequency bands share similar features as frequency domain MUSIC imaging [Meng et al., 2011] or time domain back‐projection [Ishii, 2011;Koper et al., 2011;Wang andMori, 2011; Zhang et al., 2011] (Figures 4j and 4k), which reveals dominant seismic energy radiation in the down‐dip (or…”