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Approximately two-thirds of Earth’s outermost shell is composed of oceanic plates that form at spreading ridges and recycle back to Earth’s interior in subduction zones. A series of physical and chemical changes occur in the subducting lithospheric slab as the temperature and pressure increase with depth. In particular, olivine, the most abundant mineral in the upper mantle, progressively transforms to its high-pressure polymorphs near the mantle transition zone, which is bounded by the 410 km and 660 km discontinuities. However, whether olivine still exists in the core of slabs once they penetrate the 660 km discontinuity remains debated. Based on SKS and SKKS shear-wave differential splitting times, we report new evidence that reveals the presence of metastable olivine in the uppermost lower mantle within the ancient Farallon plate beneath the eastern United States. We estimate that the low-density olivine layer in the subducted Farallon slab may compensate the high density of the rest of the slab associated with the low temperature, leading to neutral buoyancy and preventing further sinking of the slab into the deeper part of the lower mantle. 

Abstract Seismic azimuthal anisotropy characterized by shear wave splitting analyses using teleseismicXKSphases (includingSKS,SKKS, andPKS) is widely employed to constrain the deformation field in the Earth's crust and mantle. Due to the near‐vertical incidence of theXKSarrivals, the resulting splitting parameters (fast polarization orientations and splitting times) have an excellent horizontal but poor vertical resolution, resulting in considerable ambiguities in the geodynamic interpretation of the measurements. Here we useP‐to‐Sconverted phases from the Moho and the 410‐ (d410) and 660‐km (d660) discontinuities to investigate anisotropy layering beneath Southern California. Similarities between the resulting splitting parameters from theXKSandP‐to‐Sconverted phases from thed660 suggest that the lower mantle beneath the study area is azimuthally isotropic. Similarly, significant azimuthal anisotropy is not present in the mantle transition zone on the basis of the consistency between the splitting parameters obtained usingP‐to‐Sconverted phases from thed410 andd660. Crustal anisotropy measurements exhibit a mean splitting time of 0.2 ± 0.1 s and mostly NW‐SE fast orientations, which are significantly different from the dominantly E‐W fast orientations revealed usingXKSandP‐to‐Sconversions from thed410 andd660. Anisotropy measurements using shear waves with different depths of origin suggest that the Earth's upper mantle is the major anisotropic layer beneath Southern California. Additionally, this study demonstrates the effectiveness of applying a set of azimuthal anisotropy analysis techniques to reduce ambiguities in the depth of the source of the observed anisotropy.