The shear wave velocity of the upper mantle beneath the Bay of Bengal, Northeast Indian Ocean from interstation phase velocities of surface waves

Abstract

SUMMARY The Bay of Bengal evolved along the eastern margin of the Indian subcontinent about 130Ma with the breakup of India from eastern Gondwanaland. Since then the Indian lithospheric Plate has moved northward, along with the Bay of Bengal, and eventually collided with the Eurasian Plate. The age of the lithosphere beneath the central Bay of Bengal is ∼110 Ma. We evaluate the shear wave velocity structure of the upper mantle beneath the central Bay through inversion of phase velocities of fundamental mode Rayleigh and Love waves along two wave paths: (i) between Port Blair (PBA) and VIS (Visakhapatnam) and (ii) between DGPR (Diglipur) and VIS. The seismological observatories PBA and DGPR are located on the Andaman Island and to the east of the Bay and the observatory at VIS in located on the eastern coast of India to the west of the Bay. Using broad-band records of earthquakes, which lie along the great circle arc joining each pair of observatories, we obtain phase velocities between 20 and 240 s periods for Rayleigh waves and between 23 and 170 s for Love waves. These phase velocities are inverted to find the S-wave velocity structure of the upper mantle down to 400km. The crustal structure is based on previous studies of the Bay and kept fixed in the inversion. We obtain a radially anisotropic upper-mantle structure, where the SH-wave velocity (VSH) is greater than the SV-wave velocity (VSV) down to 400km. The S-wave velocity decreases sharply by ∼4.5 per cent for VSV and ∼1.5 per cent for VSH at a depth 110km, which is considered as the Lithosphere–Asthenosphere boundary (LAB), that is, the bottom of the mantle lid. Based on recent studies, such sharp fall of S-wave velocity below the mantle lid appears to indicate a partially molten thin layer (G-discontinuity) at this depth. The thickness of the mantle lid is intermediate between oceanic and continental regions. The lid is also characterized by low radial anisotropy, which decreases to near isotropy at the bottom of the lid. These two characteristics show a ‘continental-like’ mantle lid beneath the Bay. Rapid northward motion of the Indian Plate before its collision with Eurasia might have caused the large radial anisotropy observed below the mantle lid.