Core mantle boundary topography from short period PcP, PKP, and PKKP data

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We use a total of 839,369 PcP, PKPab, PKPbc, PKPdf, PKKPab, and PKKPbc residual travel times from [Bull. Seism. Soc. Am. 88 (1998) 722] grouped in 29,837 summary rays to constrain lateral variation in the depth to the core–mantle boundary (CMB). We assumed a homogeneous outer core, and the data were corrected for mantle structure and inner-core anisotropy. Inversions of separate data sets yield amplitude variations of up to 5 km for PcP, PKPab, PKPbc, and PKKP and 13 km for PKPdf. This is larger than the CMB undulations inferred in geodetic studies and, moreover, the PcP results are not readily consistent with the inferences from PKP and PKKP. Although the source–receiver ambiguity for the core-refracted phases can explain some of it, this discrepancy suggest that the travel-time residuals cannot be explained by topography alone. The wavespeed perturbations in the tomographic model used for the mantle corrections might be too small to fully account for the trade off between volumetric heterogeneity and CMB topography. In a second experiment we therefore re-applied corrections for mantle structure outside a basal 290 km-thick layer and inverted all data jointly for both CMB topography and volumetric heterogeneity within this layer. The resultant CMB model can explain PcP, PKP, and PKKP residuals and has approximately 0.2 km excess core ellipticity, which is in good agreement with inferences from free core nutation observations. Joint inversion yields a peak-to-peak amplitude of CMB topography of about 3 km, and the inversion yields velocity variations of ±5% in the basal layer. The latter suggests a strong trade-off between topography and volumetric heterogeneity, but uncertainty analyses suggest that the variation in core radius can be resolved. The spherical averages of all inverted topographic models suggest that the data are best fit if the actual CMB radius is 1.5 km less than in the Earth reference model used (i.e. the average outer core radius would be 3478 km).