Estimation of oceanic crustal structure using receiver function

Abstract

The estimation of oceanic crust structure is required to reveal the development history of Japanese island arcs and to estimate the limit of legal continental shelf. Refraction or reflection wave exploration is one of the methods for deep oceanic crust investigation, but these methods use only compressional wave or the depth component of a seismometer. Hence, it is needed to use shear wave or horizontal component of seismograms for more precise investigation to estimate the thickness of the oceanic crust. Receiver function is a function to estimate the interface of velocity change using shear wave from an earthquake without artificial sources. This study tries to apply receiver function analysis to the investigation using refraction wave not from an earthquake but artificial sources on the ground or sea surface. After the transformation of depth-horizontal coordinates into radial-tangential coordinates, the Ps converted wave can be observed clearly. We confirm the effect of the receiver function analysis as one of the methods of estimating velocity boundaries and its application to refraction seismic survey.