The Variable Continuous Bimaterial Interface in the San Jacinto Fault Zone Revealed by Dense Seismic Array Analysis of Fault Zone Head Waves

Abstract

AbstractKey factors controlling earthquake ruptures include fault geometry, continuity, and seismic velocity structure around the fault. We present a novel tool that better informs deep bimaterial fault geometry embedded in distributed damage and seismicity, associated velocity contrasts across the fault, and their correlations with surface complexities. The method employs fault zone head and direct body waves and is applied to recordings from five spatiotemporally different seismic arrays along the complex San Jacinto fault zone (SJFZ) in southern California. We detect and distinguish these signals based on instantaneous phase coherence and relative energy in a cascading manner from one scale array to another. The analysis reveals a >70‐km long continuous bimaterial interface within the SJFZ with several deep northeast dipping fault segments. The northern SJFZ, for instance, locates ∼7 km northeast of its surface expression at 18‐km depth. P‐wave velocity contrasts range from near 0% to >15%, consistent with other bimaterial faults, and differ by a few % depending on fault‐array azimuth, implying directional‐dependent velocity contrasts. S‐wave head waves and velocity contrasts are also imaged for the first time at the southern SJFZ, averaging to 2.9% in agreement with tomography results. The imaged geometry and continuity suggest the SJFZ initiated along remnant tectonic structures and translates to a rupture potential of M > 7.2, i.e., the sizes of its largest paleo‐earthquakes. The P and S contrasts, and their ratios, have important implications for earthquake rupture speed, mode, directivity, and frictional heating along the SJFZ and other major faults globally.