Abstract

About 200 km above the core–mantle boundary, the D′′ seismic discontinuity marks the depth where magnesium silicate perovskite—the main mantle mineral—is transformed into its high-pressure phase of post-perovskite1,2. Observations of seismic anisotropy within the D′′ region are inferred to arise from textures within post-perovskite3,4,5 that are created by flow in the deep mantle. Specifically, mantle flow is thought to cause post-perovskite to deform, creating a lattice-preferred orientation within the post-perovskite6,7,8,9,10. However, it is difficult to explain all of the observed patterns of seismic anisotropy in the D′′ region from this deformation mechanism alone. Here we use a low-pressure fluoride analogue system11 to study the transformation from perovskite to post-perovskite in laboratory experiments. We find that post-perovskite can inherit texture from the perovskite phase. If a similar transformation mechanism operates in the Earth, post-perovskite will inherit textures from deformed perovskite and vice versa, as lower-mantle material passes into and out of the D′′ region. We find that this textural inheritance, combined with lattice-preferred orientation in post-perovskite, can explain the observed patterns of anisotropy in the lowermost mantle.

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