Imaging the D″ reflector with noise correlations

Abstract

The lowermost mantle of the Earth is characterized by seismic structures that range from a few tens to thousands of kilometers. At present, it is difficult to test hypotheses put forward to explain seismic observations due to poor seismic coverage, as particular earthquake-station geometries are needed. We demonstrate here that seismic noise correlations can be used to robustly image deep-mantle reflections with larger stacked amplitudes of reflected waves compared with earthquake data. In a comparison between noise and earthquake data, we find that the arrival times and the slowness of reflected waves, both sampling a region beneath Siberia, agree with those for a reflector at 2530 km depth, and the small amplitude reflections are sufficiently clear in the noise correlations to compare them reliably with synthetic data. Our data open exciting prospects for illuminating new target zones in the deep mantle to further constrain the dynamics and mineralogy of the deep Earth.