Double-difference seismic tomography method and its applications

We have developed a double-difference (DD) seismic tomography method that uses both absolute arrival times and differential travel times. By taking into account path anomaly biases between event pairs explicitly, DD tomography has the ability to determine the absolute and relative event locations and velocity structure accurately with the direct use of the more accurate differential travel times (from catalog and/or waveform cross correlation (WCC) data).; We represented the Earth with a Cartesian (flat-Earth) model at a local scale and used a pseudo-bending ray tracing algorithm to find rays and travel times between events and stations. At a regional scale, the spherical shape of the Earth is taken into account by parameterizing a spherical surface inside a Cartesian volume of grid nodes. Finite-difference ray tracing algorithms are utilized to deal with velocity discontinuities such as Conrad, Moho and subducting slab boundary.; The synthetic test shows that DD tomography produces more accurate event locations and velocity structure than standard tomography. The applications of local scale DD tomography to datasets from the Hayward fault and the Parkfield section of the San Andreas fault yield a sharper velocity contrast along the fault for the former dataset and a more apparent low-velocity fault zone for the latter dataset. For the Parkfield, California dataset, we use both the absolute and differential S-P data to estimate a more consistent Vp/Vs ratio model with the local geological setting.; We have imaged the seismic velocity structure of the subducting slabs beneath Northern Honshu, Japan and the Wellington region, New Zealand with unprecedented resolution by applying the regional scale DD tomography method to the two planes of seismicity of the double seismic zone. Our models support the hypothesis that intermediate depth earthquakes are enabled by dehydration reactions of hydrous minerals.; To reduce the mismatch between the ray distribution and the regular inversion grid, we developed adaptive grid DD tomography based on tetrahedra and Voronoi diagrams. The application to the Parkfield, California dataset shows that this method produces a more pronounced and detailed velocity model near the source region.