Origin of coda waves: earthquake source resonance

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that earthquake coda waves are primarily caused by natural resonance in small-scale heterogeneity near the hypocenter, explaining their long duration and frequency characteristics.

Contribution

It reveals that coda waves originate from natural resonance in small-scale heterogeneity, a novel insight supported by seismic wave modeling.

Findings

Coda waves exhibit resonance-like behavior with specific frequency and decay properties.

Resonance frequency decreases with larger heterogeneity scale and impedance contrast.

Resonance intensity diminishes with lower impedance contrast and larger heterogeneity scale.

Abstract

Coda in local earthquake exhibits resonance-like wave behaviour where the coda emerges as long-duration small-amplitude vibration with selective frequency, slow temporal decay, and uniform spatial energy distribution around the earthquake source. Coda is thought to be the incoherent waves scattered from random small-scale heterogeneity in the earth's lithosphere. Here I show that the coda is primarily attributed to the natural resonance in strong small-scale heterogeneity around the earthquake's hypocenter through seismic wave field modeling for 1D heterogeneity. The natural resonance is evolved from the low frequency resonance (LFR) in transient regime and is an emergent phenomenon that occurs in steady state regime. Its resonance frequency decreases with increasing heterogeneous scale, impedance contrast, or random heterogeneous scale and velocity fluctuations; its intensity diminishes with decreasing impedance contrast or increasing random heterogeneous scale and velocity fluctuations.