Stress regime in the Philippine Sea slab beneath Kanto, Japan

We determine the focal mechanisms of earthquakes within the Philippine Sea slab beneath the Tokyo metropolitan area, and perform stress tensor inversions to investigate the detailed stress field within the slab. The results show a characteristic spatial variation in earthquake-generating stress. Slab stress in northeastern part of the PHS slab is characterized by down-dip tension (DDT), except for the uppermost tip of the seismic portion of the slab where down-dip compression (DDC) stress is dominant. We interpret that DDT is caused by the net slab pull and DDC is attributable to local resistance to subduction at the tip of the slab. In southwestern part of the PHS slab, sigma 1 and sigma 3 are generally rotated oblique to the dip of the slab, suggesting that earthquakes occur under stress conditions of neither DDC nor DDT. The rotations in sigma 1 and sigma 3 may be related to stress accumulation by the slip deficit along the asperity of the 1923 Kanto earthquake (M7.9). Citation: Nakajima, J., A. Hasegawa, and F. Hirose (2011), Stress regime in the Philippine Sea slab beneath Kanto, Japan, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L16318, doi:10.1029/2011GL048754.