Redshift of earthquakes via focused blind deconvolution of teleseisms

Abstract

SUMMARYWe present a robust factorization of the teleseismic waveforms resulting from an earthquake source into signals that originate from the source and signals that characterize the path effects. The extracted source signals represent the earthquake spectrum, and its variation with azimuth. Unlike most prior work on source extraction, our method is data-driven, and it does not depend on any path-related assumptions, for example, the empirical Green’s function. Instead, our formulation involves focused blind deconvolution (FBD), which associates the source characteristics with the similarity among a multitude of recorded signals. We also introduce a new spectral attribute, to be called redshift, which is based on the Fraunhofer approximation. Redshift describes source-spectrum variation, where a decrease in high-frequency content occurs at the receiver in the direction opposite to unilateral rupture propagation. Using the redshift, we identified unilateral ruptures during two recent strike-slip earthquakes. The FBD analysis of an earthquake, which originated in the eastern California shear zone, is consistent with observations from local seismological or geodetic instrumentation.