Unexpected Consequences of Transverse Isotropy

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn a series of articles, Kawakatsu et al. (2015) and Kawakatsu (2016a,b, 2018) introduced and discussed a new parameter, ηκ, that characterizes the incidence angle dependence (relative to the symmetry axis) of seismic body-wave velocities in a transverse isotropy (TI) system. During the course of these exercises, several nontrivial consequences of TI were realized and summarized as follows: (1) P-wave velocity (anisotropy) strongly influences the conversion efficiency of P-to-S and S-to-P, as much as S-wave velocity perturbation does; (2) Rayleigh-wave phase velocity has substantial sensitivity to P-wave anisotropy near the surface; (3) a trade-off exists between ηκ and the VP/VS ratio if the latter is sought under an assumption of isotropy or the elliptic condition. Among these findings, the first two deserve careful attention in interpretation of results of popular seismic analysis methods, such as receiver function analysis and ambient-noise Rayleigh-wave dispersion analysis. We present simple example cases for such problems to delineate the effect in actual situations, as well as scalings among TI parameters of the crust and mantle materials or models that might help understanding to what extent the effect becomes important.