Theoretical and experimental evidence for a post-perovskite phase of MgSiO3 in Earth's D″ layer

Artem R. Oganov () and Shigeaki Ono
Additional contact information
Artem R. Oganov: ETH Zurich
Shigeaki Ono: Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology

Nature, 2004, vol. 430, issue 6998, 445-448

Abstract: Abstract The Earth's lower mantle is believed to be composed mainly of (Mg,Fe)SiO3 perovskite, with lesser amounts of (Mg,Fe)O and CaSiO3 (ref. 1). But it has not been possible to explain many unusual properties of the lowermost ∼150 km of the mantle (the D″ layer) with this mineralogy. Here, using ab initio simulations and high-pressure experiments, we show that at pressures and temperatures of the D″ layer, MgSiO3 transforms from perovskite into a layered CaIrO3-type post-perovskite phase. The elastic properties of the post-perovskite phase and its stability field explain several observed puzzling properties of the D″ layer: its seismic anisotropy2, the strongly undulating shear-wave discontinuity at its top3,4,5,6 and possibly the anticorrelation between shear and bulk sound velocities7,8.

Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02701 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:430:y:2004:i:6998:d:10.1038_nature02701

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature02701

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().