A weak subducting slab at intermediate depths below northeast Japan

Delbridge, Brent Gregory; Houston, Heidi; Bürgmann, Roland; Kita, Saeko; Asano, Youichi

doi:10.1126/sciadv.adh2106

Title: A weak subducting slab at intermediate depths below northeast Japan

Journal Article · 01 March 2024 · Science Advances

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adh2106 · OSTI ID:2367488

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Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Univ. of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA (United States)
Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
Building Research Institute, Tsukuba (Japan)
National Institute of Earth Science and Disaster Resilience (NIED), Tsukuba (Japan)

Knowledge of the state of stress in subducting slabs is essential for understanding their mechanical behavior and the physical processes that generate earthquakes. Here, we develop a framework which uses a high-resolution focal mechanism catalog to determine the change in the position of the neutral plane before and after the M9 Tohoku-oki earthquake to determine that the deviatoric stress within the slab at intermediate depths must be very low (~1 MPa). We show that by combining the static stress calculated from coseismic slip distributions with the stress orientations before and after the mainshock, we can determine the full deviatoric stress tensor within the subducting slab at intermediate depths. These results preclude earthquake source mechanisms that require large background driving stresses, favoring a mechanically weak subducting slab, thus providing quantitative constraints on the physical processes that generate intermediate-depth earthquakes.

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Research Organization:: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA); National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); National Science Foundation (NSF)

Grant/Contract Number:: 89233218CNA000001

OSTI ID:: 2367488

Report Number(s):: LA-UR--22-32152

Journal Information:: Science Advances, Journal Name: Science Advances Journal Issue: 9 Vol. 10; ISSN 2375-2548

Publisher:: AAASCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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