A note on latent heat release from disequilibrium phase transformations and deep seismogenesis

Abstract

Latent heat release by equilibrium mineralogical transformations in an adiabatically subducting slab reversibly perturbs temperatures and pressures so as to conserve entropy. However, latent heats of metastable transformations in such a slab yield irreversible isobaric temperature changes which increase entropy despite adiabatic constraints. As a result, latent heat release by metastable exothermic transformations can yield local superheating above the background adiabat, with the degree of potential superheating increasing with extent of metastable overstep. In real slabs, however, regions of metastably persisting low-pressure phases should undergo conductive warming from surrounding transformed material. Such warming should proceed more rapidly than warming of the bulk slab from the surrounding mantle, and the resulting decrease in metastable transition pressures will slightly decrease the degree of local superheating. Nonetheless, such local temperature increases may trigger seismic release of accumulated strain energy via a number of proposed mechanisms of shear instability. Adiabatic instability, in the form of shear localization in material with temperature-dependent rheology, is one mechanism which may be triggered by such latent heat release in metastable regions yet produce rupture that extends beyond the boundaries of such regions.