Shear wave seismic interferometry for lithospheric imaging: Application to southern Mexico

Seismic interferometry allows for the creation of new seismic traces by cross correlating existing ones. With sufficient sampling of remote-source positions, it is possible to create a virtual source record by transforming a receiver location into a virtual source. The imaging technique developed here directly retrieves reflectivity information from the subsurface. Other techniques, namely receiver-function and tomography, rely on mode-converted energy and perturbations in a velocity field, respectively, to make inferences regarding structure. We select shear phases as an imaging source because of their lower propagation velocity, sensitivity to melt, and ability to treat vertical shear and horizontal shear wavefields independently. Teleseismic shear phases approximate a plane wave due to the extent of wavefront spread compared to a finite receiver array located on the free surface. The teleseismic shear phase transmission responses are used as input to the seismic interferometry technique. We create virtual shear source records by converting each receiver in the array into a virtual source. By cross correlating the received signals, the complex source character of distant earthquakes is imprinted on the virtual source records as the average autocorrelation of individual source-time functions. We demonstrate a technique that largely removes this imprint by filtering in the common-offset domain. A field data set was selected from the Meso-America Subduction Experiment. Despite the suboptimal remote-source sampling, an image of the lithosphere was produced that confirms features of the subduction zone that were previously found with the receiver-function technique. Key Points Shear wave seismic interferometry can image lithospheric features Receiver-side reflectivity retrievable from teleseismic S wave responses Earthquake source character can be mitigated in seismic interferometric imaging