A Library of Elastic Tensors for Lowermost Mantle Seismic Anisotropy Studies and Comparison With Seismic Observations

Abstract

Abstract The exact mechanism for lowermost mantle seismic anisotropy remains unknown; however, work on the elasticity and deformation of lower mantle materials has constrained a few possible options. The most probable minerals producing anisotropy are bridgmanite, postperovskite, and ferropericlase. While there is an extensive literature on the elasticity and deformation of lower mantle minerals, we create a comprehensive uniform database of D″ anisotropy scenarios. In order to characterize a range of the possible fabrics for D″ anisotropy, we carry out VPSC (visco‐plastic self‐consistent modeling) to predict textures for each proposed mineral and dominant slip system. We numerically deform each mineral under different geometrical scenarios: simple shear, pure shear, and extension. By using published single crystal elasticity values, we produce a library of 336 candidate elastic tensors. We used the elastic tensor library to revisit previously published D″‐associated seismic anisotropy studies for crossing raypaths (Siberia, North America, the Afar region of Africa, and Australia). While we cannot identify a single, unique mechanism that explains all of these data sets, we find that postperovskite (dominant slip on [100](010) or [100](001)) and periclase (dominant slip on {100}) provide the best fit to the observations and suggest reasonable shear directions for each region of interest. Bridgmanite generally provides a poor fit to the observations; however, we cannot completely rule out any particular model. As the number of anisotropy observations for D″ increases, this elastic tensor library will be helpful for observational seismologists in identifying possible mechanisms of anisotropy and shear directions at in the lowermost mantle.