Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America; April 2005; v. 95; no. 2;
p. 390-400; DOI: 10.1785/0120040103
© 2005 Seismological Society of America
Ambiguity of the Moment Tensor
Jean-Paul Ampuero*,1 and
F. A. Dahlen1
1 Department of
Geosciences
Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey
08544
(J.-P.A.)
Correspondence: * Present address: Institute of Geophysics, Seismology, and Geodynamics, ETH Hönggerberg (HPP), CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland; ampuero{at}erdw.ethz.ch.
An earthquake on a fault separating two dissimilar materials does not have a
well-defined moment density tensor. We present a complete characterization of
this bimaterial ambiguity in the general case of slip on a fault in an
anisotropic medium. The ambiguity can be eliminated by utilizing a potency
density rather than a moment density representation of a bimaterial source.
Copyright © 2009 by Seismological Society of America