Postseismicity of slow-slip doublets discerned on the outermost of the Nankai Trough subduction megathrust

TL;DR

This study analyzes slow-slip events in the Nankai Trough, revealing complex postseismic behaviors involving exponential and logarithmic slips, which could help predict potential megathrust earthquakes.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of slow earthquake postseismicity, identifying dual slip behaviors and their implications for earthquake prediction.

Findings

Exponential slips occur at the same depth as logarithmic slips.

Deep tremors synchronize with logarithmic slip.

Misfit in physics-based models suggests complex slip mechanisms.

Abstract

Despite dissimilar slip rates, slow earthquakes are faulting as ordinary earthquakes are. It is therefore physically natural that slow earthquakes also cause postseismic motions similarly to ordinary earthquakes, even though coseismic and postseismic slips remain undifferentiated for slow earthquakes. We pursue the slow-earthquake postseismicity based on the analysis of a fault slip beneath the Bungo Channel, the westernmost region of the Nankai Trough subduction zone in southwestern Japan. Its 2010 long-term slow slip event (SSE) was mispredicted by physics-based models, which concludes that the initial acceleration of this SSE was too abrupt for a slow variant of a fault rupture. We identify that a mispredicted GNSS signal evolves logarithmically in time, preceded by minor signals that evolve exponentially, lasting about two years west and about half a year east. By performing sparse inverse modeling on the GNSS, we have estimated that exponential slips occur at the same depth, bracketing a logarithmic slip that occurs beneath the channel. The regions of exponential slips match repeating slow-slip regions, and deep tremors synchronize exclusively with the logarithmic slip. This source complexity can be explained as a neighboring rupture doublet and its afterslip and aftershocks by the known mechanics of ordinary earthquakes. If slow earthquakes have a dual origin in exponentially nucleating slow rupture and logarithmically decelerating postseismic creep, it is possible to pick the slow earthquake nuclei that could accelerate into megathrust catastrophes.