Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 167 (2008) 5370

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Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors

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Tomographic inversion for three-dimensional anisotropy of Earths inner core

Xinlei Sun , Xiaodong Song
Geology Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 29 August 2007
Received in revised form 23 December 2007
Accepted 11 February 2008
Keywords:
Three-dimensional inner core anisotropy
Inner inner core
Three-dimensional ray tracing

a b s t r a c t
Seismological studies generally suggest that the Earths inner core is anisotropic and the anisotropic
structure changes signicantly both laterally and with depth. Previous body-wave studies of the inner
core have relied on ray tracing or waveform modeling using one-dimensional (1D) models. Here we
present non-linear tomographic inversions of the inner core anisotropy using three-dimensional (3D)
ray tracing, spline parameterization, and a large collection of PKP differential travel times. We adapt a
pseudo-bending ray tracing (PBR) method in spherical coordinates for seismic rays that traverse the inner
core (PKP(DF) phase). The method iteratively perturbs each discontinuity point and continuous segment
of the ray through 3D earth structure so that its travel time is minimum. The 3D anisotropic structure
of the inner core is approximated to the rst order as 3D heterogeneous (but isotropic) structure for a
given ray. The data are corrected using a scaled mantle tomographic model. The inner core anisotropy
model obtained has the following major features. (1) The model has strong hemispherical and depth
variation. The isotropic velocity in the topmost inner core is greater in quasi-eastern hemisphere (QEH)
(40160 E) than in quasi-western hemisphere (QWH) (other longitudes). The anisotropy is weak in QEH
to the depth of 600700 km below the inner core boundary (ICB), while in QWH, the anisotropy increases
at much shallower depth (about 100200 km below the ICB) to about 34%, then remains at about 24%
throughout the rest of the inner core. (2) The anisotropy form changes abruptly (over a depth range of
about 150 km) at the radius of about 600 km, slightly less than half of the inner core radius, forming a
distinct inner inner core (IIC). The velocity in the IIC has maximums at equatorial and polar directions and
minimum at an angle of about 40 from the equatorial plane. The velocity in the outer inner core (OIC),
however, changes little for ray directions 040 from the equatorial plane. (3) Despite large variation of
the anisotropy, the isotropic velocity (Voigt average) throughout the inner core is nearly uniform. The
results suggest that the OIC is likely composed of the same type of iron crystals with uniform chemistry,
but the IIC may be composed of a different type of crystal alignment, a different iron phase, or a different
chemical composition. Our tests on model parameterization, mantle correction, and linear and non-linear
inversion suggest the main features of our model are very robust. However, ne scale structures are likely
to differ, particularly in the major transition zones, e.g., in the topmost QWH (isotropy to anisotropy),
between OIC and IIC (change in the form of anisotropy), and between QEH and QWH in OIC (difference
in anisotropy strength). Searches for possible waveform complications from these boundaries need to be
aware of the directional dependence and geographical variation to be successful.
2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The Earths inner core is important in understanding the evolution of the Earth and the geodynamo responsible for the Earths
magnetic eld. It is dominated by cylindrical anisotropy with fast
axis aligned nearly NS (e.g., Morelli et al., 1986; Woodhouse et al.,
1986; Creager, 1992; Song and Helmberger, 1993a; Tromp, 1993;
Shearer, 1994). In last decade or so, increased studies have shown

Corresponding author at: Geology Department, University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, 245 NHB, 1301 West Green Street, Urbana, IL 61801, United States.
E-mail address: xsun@uiuc.edu (X. Sun).
0031-9201/$ see front matter 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.pepi.2008.02.011

many interesting features of the inner core and complexities of the

inner core anisotropy. The topmost of the inner core (top 100 km or
so) is nearly isotropic with anisotropy less than 1% (Shearer, 1994;
Song and Helmberger, 1995a). Between the upper isotropic and the
lower anisotropic regions, a transition zone was suggested, and the
depth of this transition may be quite different in the two hemispheres (Song and Helmberger, 1998). In the deeper part, strong
anisotropy (2.53% on average) seems to persist to the center of the
inner core (Vinnik et al., 1994; Song, 1996; Sun and Song, 2002).
The inner core attenuation also appears to change with depth
(Song and Helmberger, 1995a; Cormier et al., 1998; Garcia, 2002a;
Yu and Wen, 2006; Cao et al., 2007). The lateral variation of the
inner core structure is just as pronounced. An important observa-

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X. Sun, X. Song / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 167 (2008) 5370

tion is the hemispherical variation in seismic anisotropy (Tanaka

and Hamaguchi, 1997; Creager, 1999), in isotropic velocity of the
topmost inner core (Tanaka and Hamaguchi, 1997; Niu and Wen,
2001; Cao and Romanowicz, 2004), and in attenuation (Cao and
Romanowicz, 2004; Yu and Wen, 2006). Lateral variation appears
signicant even at the ne scale of a few km to cause strong scattering (Vidale and Earle, 2000; Cormier and Li, 2002; Koper et al.,
2004). More recently, Ishii and Dziewonski (2002) showed that
there may be a distinct inner most inner core (IMIC), which has
minimum velocity at about 45 from Earths rotation axis and a
radius of about 300 km. Evidence for a possible anisotropy change
was subsequently reported (Beghein and Trampert, 2003; Sun and
Song, 2004; Cormier and Stroujkova, 2005; Calvet et al., 2006; Cao
and Romanowicz, 2007) at perhaps a larger radius of 400500 km.
A notable exception to the above studies is the work by Ishii et
al. (2002a,b), which favors a model of constant anisotropy for the
whole inner core.
The lateral variability of the inner core has provided a marker
for the detection of the inner core rotation (e.g., Song and Richards,
1996; Creager, 1997; Vidale et al., 2000; Laske and Masters, 2003;
Zhang et al., 2005; Sun et al., 2006; Song and Poupinet, 2007). The
recent study by Zhang et al. (2005) provided strong support for an
inner core motion, based on direct comparison of seismic waves
from earthquake doublets (identical in location and source mechanisms, producing identical wave shapes). Using one of the best
doublets, Wen (2006) and Cao et al. (2007) reported evidence for
signicant topography of the inner core boundary (ICB) or localized
rapid changes of the ICB. With a larger set of 14 waveform doublets,
Song and Dai (submitted for publication) conrmed the observation and suggested ICB topography of a few kilometers on local to
regional scales. Regions with large topography (beneath Africa and
Central America) coincide with large anomalies at the core-mantle

boundary (CMB), which may suggest strong thermal coupling of the

mantle and the core.
Seismic tomography of the 3D anisotropy of the whole inner core
has not been carried out, although there have been some attempts
to map both the depth and lateral variation of the anisotropy of the
whole inner core. Using normal-mode and differential PKP traveltime data, Romanowicz et al. (1996) and Durek and Romanowicz
(1999) inverted for models of axisymmetric inner core anisotropy
that include latitudinal and depth variations. A few studies explored
body-wave PKP travel times, including arrival times from the ISC (Su
and Dziewonski, 1995), hand-measured differential times (Creager,
1999), or the combination of both (Garcia and Souriau, 2000). Models are parameterized approximately. At the radial direction, the
inner core is divided into three or four layers, or, the data at different distances are divided into groups to represent roughly the
anisotropy at different depth. At the longitudinal direction, the bottoming point longitude of a ray or the longitude of a cylindrical
stacking (Su and Dziewonski, 1995) is used to represent the lateral
sample of the ray.
In this study, we attempt to map the 3D anisotropic structure of
the inner core using seismic tomography techniques. Our data are
a large collection of differential travel times between PKP(DF) and
other three branches (AB, BC and CD) of PKP waves (Fig. 1). We adapt
a 3D ray tracing method for the anisotropic inner core. Because
of apparent large variation of the anisotropy, the actual ray paths
may depart signicantly from those for a 1D reference model. We
parameterize our models using cubic splines in the radial direction
and linear interpolation in the longitudinal direction. Our inversion is done iteratively by retracing the rays through 3D anisotropic
media. This paper discusses the details of the inversion. Some of the
important features of our nal model are discussed in a separate
paper, which is used to map the texturing of iron in the inner core
(Sun and Song, submitted for publication).
2. Data

Fig. 1. PKP ray paths and travel-time curves for a 1D reference model. Differential
travel times between PKP(DF) and other three branches (AB, BC and CD) of PKP waves
from 130 to 180 are used in this study.

We dene the ray angle () as the angle of the DF ray in the
inner core with the equatorial plane; the angle of the ray with the
Earths rotation would be  = 90  (in degree). We refer paths
with  < 50 as equatorial paths and those with  > 50 as polar
paths. We also dene quasi-eastern hemisphere (QEH) or simply eastern hemisphere as longitudes 40160 and the rest of the
inner core as quasi-western hemisphere (QWH) or simply western hemisphere. The division is guided by previous studies of the
hemispherical variation of the seismic properties cited in the introduction above.
The data we used are PKP differential travel times ABDF, BCDF,
and CDDF. Because of the care required to obtain high-quality differential time measurements manually, our data selection effort is
not driven by the goal of obtaining the largest amount of measurements. Rather, we have focused strategically on obtaining uniform
spatial coverage at different ray directions, particularly on obtaining polar path data, which are most sensitive to the inner core
anisotropy. Residuals of the differential travel times are calculated
relative to AK135 model (Kennett et al., 1995) with ellipticity correction (Dziewonski and Gilbert, 1976). Some studies have suggested
that the velocity gradient at the bottom of the outer core is lower
(Souriau and Poupinet, 1991; Song and Helmberger, 1995b; Creager,
1999), as in AK135, than that of PREM (Dziewonski and Anderson,
1981), although the gradient may also vary with hemispheres (Yu
et al., 2005). The choice of a 1D reference model would affect the
average radial model of the inner core, but does not affect the 3D
anisotropy pattern of this study. These data include measurements
that we have accumulated over years (Song and Helmberger, 1993a,
1995a; Song, 1996; Sun and Song, 2002). Our more recent measure-

X. Sun, X. Song / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 167 (2008) 5370

ments are obtained using waveforms from the Data Management

Center of Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS)
up to 2006 and from the new China Seismological Network (CSN),
a Chinese national backbone network installed in the recent years.
The differential travel times of PKP are measured using cross correlation. Only data with cross correlation coefcient greater than 0.5
are kept. Other data include those from previous studies (Poupinet
et al., 1993; Vinnik et al., 1994; Tanaka and Hamaguchi, 1997;
Creager, 1999; Niu and Wen, 2001). We nally have a total of 4439
differential travel-time measurements from 2065 earthquakes and
582 stations. The total numbers of equatorial and polar paths are
3448 and 991, respectively.
Fig. 2 shows all the PKP differential time residuals we used.
These raw data show some important features, which serve as
an excellent guide for the verication and interpretation of the
inversion model. Most of these features have been identied from
regional studies as mentioned in the introduction. (1) Large positive
residuals are populated in polar regions (large  or small  values),
indicating a dominant cylindrical anisotropy with the fast axis

55

along NS direction. (2) At small distances (<145 ), all the residuals

(from CDDF) are smaller compared with those at larger distances.
No obvious directional dependence is observed, suggesting weak
anisotropy at the topmost inner core. (3) The polar data are generally larger in QWH than in QEH at distance range from 145 to 165 ,
indicating different anisotropy strength in the two hemispheres. (4)
At distances 130156 , the residuals of the equatorial paths in QWH
are mostly negative while those in QEH are mostly positive, indicating faster speeds in eastern hemisphere in equatorial directions.
(5) At distances 160180 , there are bands of negative residuals at
mid-latitudes that are sandwiched between positive residuals in
the equatorial and polar directions, indicating a change of the form
of anisotropy in the inner part of the inner core. (6) The distribution
of the data is not uniform with clusters of certain paths. For example, the cluster around (63 N, 75 W) at distance 150156 is from
earthquakes in the S. Sandwich Islands (SSI) to stations in Alaska.
Fig. 3 provides another comparison between polar and equatorial paths in eastern and western hemispheres, respectively. In the
eastern hemisphere, the polar residuals are similar to or slightly

Fig. 2. All differential PKP travel-time data used in this study. Plotted are residuals of differential CDDF, BCDF, and ABDF relative to model AK135 with ellipticity correction.
The data are divided according to distance range (labeled at the top of each panel). The latitude and longitude in each panel represent the ray angle from the equatorial plane
() and the midpoint longitude of the PKP(DF) ray, respectively. The circles and crosses are positive and negative residuals, respectively, with the symbol size proportional to
the amplitude of the corresponding residual. The plot is symmetric relative to the equator as the same ray is represented by a latitude () in the north and another one ()
in the south at the same longitude.

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X. Sun, X. Song / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 167 (2008) 5370

Fig. 3. Residuals of ABDF and BCDF differential travel times in quasi-eastern hemisphere (QEH) and quasi-western hemisphere (QWH) as a function of distance. The
solid diamonds are polar data, and the grey circles are equatorial data. Note the different behaviors of the polar and equatorial paths as a function of distance in the
two hemispheres, suggesting the anisotropy changes with depth and laterally.

larger than the equatorial ones at distances less than 160 , indicating weak anisotropy in the upper part of the inner core. In the
western hemisphere, even at the distance of 145 , the polar data
are clearly larger than equatorial ones, suggesting strong anisotropy
starts at shallow depth.
PKP differential travel time has its advantages: it eliminates
earthquake origin time errors and reduces the inuences of earthquake location errors and strong heterogeneity in crust and upper
mantle because the ray paths of different PKP branches are very
close down to mid-mantle. In addition, it has been shown that the
anomalies of PKP differential travel times at larger distances for
polar directions are mostly from the inner core anisotropy instead
of mantle heterogeneity, although this is not true for some of the
equatorial directions (Sun and Song, 2002).
However, using the differential times also has some drawbacks. First, differential ABDF times and, to a less degree, BCDF
times, can be affected by lowermost mantle structures (Song and
Helmberger, 1997; Breger et al., 2000). The AB and DF branches are
far away from each other at the core mantle boundary (CMB), where
strong heterogeneities have been proved to exist. Secondly, because
of the distribution of earthquakes and stations, the data coverage
is limited, especially for polar directions. A subset of the rays sampling the same region may dominate at certain ray angles, e.g., rays
from SSI earthquakes to stations in Alaska and Canada, which may
make the inversion unstable or biased, particularly when the total
data set is relatively small.
Resolution of seismic tomography of the mantle has increased
steadily over the years (see recent review by Romanowicz, 2003).
Recent direct comparison of PKP differential times and predictions from S. Grands S tomographic model is encouraging, which
shows good correlation between the data and predictions in certain regions (Sun et al., 2007; Zheng et al., 2007). Fig. 4 compares
a subset of the observed PKP differential times with the predictions for the most recent MIT P tomographic model from Li et al.
(submitted for publication). The mantle predictions are calculated

Fig. 4. Comparison of observed PKP differential time residuals and mantle model
predictions. The mantle model is the most recent P-wave tomographic model from
MIT (Li et al., submitted for publication). The data that are used here to compare with
the mantle model are ABDF and BCDF differential times from equatorial paths (ray
angles  < 40 ) with distances less than 170 (a total of 2134 measurements). The
data are a subset of the data used in this study. Polar paths and antipodal data are
excluded to avoid contamination from inner core anisotropy. (a) Observed residuals
plotted at the entry and exit points of AB or BC rays at the core-mantle boundary.
Positive and negative residuals generally mean slow and fast anomalies, respectively.
(b) Same as (a), but for the predicted residuals for the MIT model. Symbols are in
the same scale as (a). (c) Observed residuals vs. predictions. The observed residuals
correlate with the predictions very well with cross-correlation coefcient of 0.65.
The regression has a slope of 1.28.

based on 1D rays in the AK135 model. The subset of data (a total

of 2134 measurements) is ABDF and BCDF differential times for
equatorial paths with distance less than 170 . Polar paths and data
at antipodal distance (>170 ) are excluded to reduce the inuence
from the inner core anisotropy and possible IMIC structure. The
CDDF data set is excluded because the CD and DF paths are so
similar throughout the mantle that any mantle inuence cannot be
resolved by the current generation of mantle tomographic models.
The observations and predictions correlate rather well with crosscorrelation coefcient of 0.65 (Fig. 4). The linear regression of the
data with respect to the predictions yields a scaling factor of 1.28,

X. Sun, X. Song / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 167 (2008) 5370

57

i.e., the model under-predicts the data by about 28% on average. The
variance reduction of these equatorial data is about 43%, after correcting for the mantle model with the scaling factor. We thus correct
all of our PKP differential times using the MIT mantle model and
the scaling factor (1.28) and regard the corrected data set as the raw
data for the inversion of the inner core structure. This correction by
no means removes all the mantle inuence. However, because of
the good correlation of the data and the predictions, we believe the
correction reduces signicantly the inuence of large-scale anomalies, such as the Central Pacic and the African Super plumes and
the circum Pacic high-velocity anomalies.
To reduce the inuence of uneven sampling of the data, we
use summary paths for the inversion. We sort all the paths into
groups. For each group, all the events are within a certain distance from each other and all the stations are also within a certain
distance from each other. We then select the path which has the
median of all the residuals as the summary path of the group. The
selection strategy and algorithm are similar to that described in
Liang et al. (2004), which is modied to apply not only to earthquakes but also to stations. The general approach of summary rays
has been used previously with respect to the turning point in the
inner core (e.g., Shearer, 1994) or with respect to the distance and
the ray direction in the inner core (Su and Dziewonski, 1995). We
choose 200 km as the distance range for the grouping of events and
stations, respectively. The summary paths preserve the characteristics of the distribution of the raw data while greatly reducing the
data redundancy. We obtain a total of 1673 summary rays (Fig. 5).
While the coverage is quite uniform for both equatorial and polar
paths, the polar-path coverage is still quite sparse. The depth range
of 200400 km below the ICB is best covered and the coverage of
the central part of the inner core is particularly poor.
3. Inversion method
In this section, we described in detail our inversion process,
including 3D ray tracing, parameterization, and inversion formulation. We also show a synthetic test to demonstrate the validity
and resolution of the method.
3.1. 3D ray tracing

Fig. 5. Path coverage of the inner core segments of summary rays from equatorial
data (a) and polar data (b). While the coverage is quite uniform for both equatorial
and polar paths, the polar-path coverage is still quite sparse. (c) Depth distribution
of the summary rays for every 200 km. The number of total, equatorial, and polar
rays are plotted separately. The best sampling region is 200400 km below the ICB
for both equatorial and polar paths. The sampling for the central part of the inner
core is still poor along polar paths.

Previous body-wave studies of the inner core have relied on ray

tracing or waveform modeling using 1D models. If the lateral and
depth changes of anisotropy are up to several percent, the ray paths
can deviate greatly from those based on a 1D isotropic reference
model (Ouzounis and Creager, 2001). One of the most anomalous
samples is from SSI events to stations in Canada and Alaska, where
waveform modeling suggests a rapid transition from isotropy at
the top of the inner core to large anisotropy of about 78% below
about 200250 km (Song and Helmberger, 1998; Song and Xu,
2002). An inversion based on 1D ray tracing places the boundary at
50150 km with smaller anisotropy below (Ouzounis and Creager,
2001).
Here we modify a pseudo-bending ray tracing (PBR) method
proposed by Koketsu and Sekine (1998) for seismic ray tracing
through 3D isotropic media in spherical coordinates. This method
has been applied to regional crust and mantle tomography (e.g.,
Widiyantoro et al., 2000). A Cartesian version of the method was
proposed earlier by Um and Thurber (1987) and was extended to
include discontinuities by Zhao et al. (1992). Our basic algorithm is
shown in the ow chart in Fig. 6. Our initial ray is a straight line from
the source to the center of the Earth and another straight line back
to the station. The initial path includes these end points, all the
discontinuity points (intersecting points with the discontinuities

in the reference model), and a continuity point (e.g., the midpoint)

between every two adjacent points needed to perturb the ray segment in the continuous part. The method iteratively perturbs each
point of the ray at a discontinuity and in the continuous medium
so that the total travel time is minimum. For the continuous points,
we use the PBR method, which essentially perturb each point in
the direction normal to the local velocity gradient. Our implementation includes a exible scheme in calculating the velocity gradient
needed to perturb the ray (Fig. 6). A large volume is included in calculating the velocity gradient initially to nd the global minimum,
but a small volume surrounding the ray is used eventually to obtain
the precise local velocity gradient that is sampled by the ray. The
nal ray is the one with minimum travel time between the source
and the station. For the discontinuity points, we use a bisection
method to nd the points at the discontinuities so that Snells Law
is satised.
Tests show that our implementation is very stable, reliable, and
fast. We have traced over 4000 rays for which we have differential
PKP travel-time measurements using both the PBR method and an
exact shooting method for a 1D model (AK135). The travel-time
difference from the two methods is generally within 0.05 s with
a few up to 0.07 s and the largest path difference is within 24 km

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X. Sun, X. Song / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 167 (2008) 5370

Fig. 6. Flow chart of our 3D pseudo-bending ray tracing (PBR) algorithm, where DP
is discontinuity point (where there is a velocity discontinuity), CP is continuity point
(where there is not a velocity discontinuity), L is current perturbation length, L0 is
original perturbation length, Lmin is minimum perturbation length, and p is 0.001%.
The perturbation length is a critical parameter used in the PBR method to estimate
velocity gradient in the vicinity of the point to be perturbed. In our implementation,
we also include an enhancement factor (Um and Thurber, 1987), which is allowed to
vary to make the computation more stable. In step 1, L and L0 are set to one half of the
segment length (S) between the two points adjacent to the point to be perturbed,
and Lmin is set to S/8. In step 4 or 9, the improvement is measured as a percentage
of the travel time of the whole path (or about 11001200 s for PKP(DF)), i.e. the
precision from each iteration is about 0.01 s.

(Fig. 7). Even with a model of strong velocity gradient (5% increase
over the depth range of 200300 km below the ICB), the travel-time
difference is still less than 0.08 s and the largest path difference is
within 40 km (Fig. 8).
The importance of 3D ray tracing is demonstrated in Fig. 9 a using
the PBR ray tracing and a hypothetical model with a 5% velocity
increase over a 200 km depth transition. The ray path to distance
150 turns deeper by 162 km (left side) or 339 km (top or bottom)
than what is expected from a 1D ray. The velocity changes at these
locations are shallow enough so that the shortest time path is at a
deeper depth. For a ray sampling the right side, there is no different
because the velocity increase occurs too deep to affect the ray for
this distance. Fig. 9 b compares the 3D ray and the 1D ray in the
lowermost mantle and the core that sample the top structure of
the hypothetical inner core. The difference of the 3D and 1D rays at
the CMB is 280 km for the hypothetical model. In our inversion, we
do not recalculate the mantle corrections using the 3D rays.
The bending method is valid for 3D but isotropic media, yet the
inner core is anisotropic. Fortunately, the ray direction in the inner
core does not change much (within 10 ) even with a strong velocity

Fig. 7. Ray tracing using the PBR method and an exact shooting method. The test
model is a 1D model (AK135). (a) Travel-time differences between two methods.
The maximum difference is about 0.03 s at 150 . (b) Bottoming depth of rays from
two methods. Solid line is from an exact shooting method, and the dashed line is
from the bending method. In general the two lines match each other very well. The
maximum difference is about 24 km, indicating the pseudo-bending code can nd
the right ray. (c) Maximum ray angle change in the inner core. Although the velocity
in the inner core increases with depth, the ray direction in the inner core doesnt
change much. The maximum change in this model is about 1.1 at 160 , suggesting
that when tracing rays in 3D anisotropic inner core, we can use 3D heterogeneity
structure for a given ray as approximation.

gradient in the inner core (Figs. 7 and 8). Thus, the 3D anisotropic
structure of the inner core can be approximated to the rst order as
3D heterogeneous (but isotropic) structure for a given ray. Once the
3D anisotropy is known from previous iteration, the corresponding
3D isotropic model can be constructed for that ray and the 3D ray
tracing can be carried out. This approximation is one of the most
important keys to our success in inverting for the 3D anisotropy of
the inner core.
3.2. Parameterization
Our task is to invert the P wave anisotropy in the whole inner
core. This requires not only the spatial coverage but also the directional coverage of seismic rays for the whole inner core. Our choice
of the parameterization is guided by the data coverage, prior knowledge, and tests on resolution and stability. Fig. 10 shows our model
parameterization (for anisotropic coefcients, see below). In the
radial direction, we assume uniform anisotropy for an IMIC with a
radius of 300 km. The assumption is driven by the fact that physical
conditions approaching the center of the Earth collapse to a point
and the data coverage at antipodal distance is sparse.

X. Sun, X. Song / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 167 (2008) 5370

Fig. 8. Same as Fig. 7 but for a model with a velocity increase inside the inner core.
The increase starts at 200 km below the ICB to 5% at 300 km below the ICB, relative
to AK135. Note that the maximum travel-time difference is about 0.08 s, and the
maximum ray angle change in the inner core is about 8 when the ray samples
the strong gradient region. Even in such a model, the isotropic 3D heterogeneity
approximation for a given ray in anisotropic structure is still possible to rst order.

59

Fig. 9. Comparison of rays in a 1D model (AK135) and a 3D inner core model

from the ray bending method. The 3D model is based on AK135 and includes an
offset inner sphere of increased velocity centered at (200 km, 0, 0). The velocity
increases from 0% to 5% over a 200 km transition that starts at the depth of 100 km
below the ICB in the left side and 500 km in the right side of this cross section. (a)
The rays in this gure are at distance 150 that sample four representative regions.
The dashed and solid lines are rays in AK135 model and the 3D model, respectively.
(b) Display of ray paths in the lower mantle and the core for the 1D and 3D rays
shown at the top of (a). The departure of the 3D ray from the 1D ray is about 280 km
at the CMB in this hypothetical case.

We represent the rest of the inner core using cubic splines with
seven knots for each parameter (i.e., with a radial spacing of about
150 km). In the longitudinal direction, we represent each parameter using linear interpolation with three knots at longitudes 100 ,
220 (or 140 W), and 340 (or 20 W), respectively. This choice puts
one knot in the center of the QEH and two points in QWH, to represent possible hemispherical patterns discussed above. Because of
our limited spatial and directional coverage, no latitudinal dependence is included in this study, although previous studies have
suggested latitudinal dependence (Romanowicz et al., 1996; Durek
and Romanowicz, 1999). Thus our model is 3D in Cartesian coordinates but two-dimensional in spherical coordinates.
3.3. Inversion formulation
The anisotropy of the inner core can be expressed as (e.g., Song,
1997):
v
= + cos2  +  sin2 2,
v

(1)

where  is the angle of the seismic ray from the spin axis (i.e.  =
90 ), is the velocity perturbation at equatorial plane, is the
perturbation at polar direction (the amplitude of the anisotropy),
and  contributes to the anisotropy in the intermediate angles. The
parameters and  are related to elastic constants by: = (C33
C11 )/2C11 and  = (4C44 + 2C13 C11 C33 )/8C11 .
Each anisotropy coefcient, , , or  is represented by linear interpolation in longitudinal direction and by cubic splines

Fig. 10. Schematic diagram of our model parameterization. This is a view from
the North Pole. The outer circle is the ICB; the numbers labeled at the outer circle
are longitudes. Our model includes an innermost inner core of uniform anisotropy
(inner circle) with radius of 300 km. At larger radii, each anisotropy coefcient
(, , or ) is represented in radial direction by cubic splines with seven equally
spaced knots (knot spacing of about 150 km) and in longitudinal direction by linear
interpolation of three equally spaced knots at longitudes 100 , 220 (or 140 W),
and 340 (or 20 W), respectively.

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X. Sun, X. Song / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 167 (2008) 5370

(Michelini and Mcevilly, 1991) in radial direction as discussed

above. The knots have equal distance from each other (Fig. 10). Suppose the linear bases are Li (x), cubic spline bases are i (x), where i
denotes the ith basis and x is location variable, then the anisotropy
coefcient anywhere in the inner core can be calculated below
y(, , r) =

aij Li ()j (r),

(2)

where y is , , or ; , , and r are colatitude, longitude, and radius,

respectively; and aij is the knot coefcient to be tted at the grid
i (longitudinal) and j (radial). Once all knot coefcients (aij ) are
known, the anisotropy coefcients can be calculated, so can the
anisotropy.
The inversion problem can be expressed as
t =

aij ,
aij

(3)

where t is the PKP(DF) travel-time residual, thus t is the

corresponding PKP differential travel-time residual; and
aij is
perturbation to knot coefcient aij .

Since

t=

dl
,
v


t =

(4)

v
dt,
v

(5)

we have

(t)
t
=
=
aij
aij

( v
v )
aij


dt = f

Li ()j (r) dt,

(6)

where f is dened as

f =

1
cos2 
sin2 2

for
for
for 

(7)

Thus from Eq. (3), we have a linear system:

di = Gij mj ,

(8)

where di is differential travel-time residual for the ith ray, mj is the

jth model parameter (perturbation to knot coefcient), and Gij is
the kernel matrix dened by Eq. (6).

Fig. 11. Synthetic test of the inversion. The input model includes depth and lateral variations in the anisotropic coefcients that resemble some main features of the real
inversion. The data are synthesized using the ray bending code, then a Gaussian noise with 0.1 s standard deviation is added to the synthetic data. (a) Comparison of input
parameters (gray lines) and inversion results (black lines) as a function of radius) at the three longitudinal knots 100 , 220 , and 340 from left to right, respectively. (b) Maps
of interpolated input parameters ( (left), (center) and  (right)) as a function of radius and longitude for the inner core, viewed from the north pole. (c) Same as (b), but
for inversion results. (b) and (c) use the same gray scale for each parameter (bottom).

X. Sun, X. Song / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 167 (2008) 5370

61

Fig. 12. Inversion results of the real data in this study. (a) The coefcients are plotted at the three longitudinal knots as a function of radius from the Earths center to the ICB.
(b) Maps (polar views) of interpolated values as a function of radius and longitude. From left to right are , , and , respectively.

Our inversion also includes weighting on the data and a prior

constraints on model parameters. The directional coverage of our
data is not uniformthere are many more equatorial paths than
polar paths. We divide the whole data set according to the ray
angle into 10 bins and obtain the number of data in each bin:
Ni , i =
1, . . . , 9. We then weigh each datum with ray angle  by
Wj =
N1 /Nj , where j = int(/10) + 1. The weighting makes the
inversion more stable.
We also impose constraints on the anisotropy parameters ( and
) at the ICB: we set them to zero. This is motivated by previous
studies which suggest weak anisotropy at the topmost inner core
as discussion above. The constraints are needed because of the following. First, we have a small amount of CDDF data (from Niu and
Wen, 2001) sampling the topmost inner core. The weak anisotropy
near the ICB then can be easily contaminated by data at larger distances. Secondly, our model parameterization using cubic splines
has limited resolution. Even if we put more weight on the CDDF
data, the solution for the ICB will be distorted by the structure
below.
We use the LSQR algorithm (Paige and Saunders, 1982) to invert
for the anisotropy coefcients iteratively. We start with a 1D model
(AK135). After each iteration, we update the inner core model with
the anisotropy coefcients perturbations obtained from the last
iteration. The rays are retraced using the new model, and the new
residuals of the data with respect to the new model are then used
to invert for new anisotropy coefcients perturbations. We choose
the 6th iteration results as the nal model, although the results are
already stable at 4th iteration.

depth and lateral variations that resemble our nal model (see discussion below). The synthetic data are calculated using the bending
code, then a Gaussian noise with standard deviation of 0.1 s is
added. The precision of our differential travel times measurements
is likely smaller than this value. The inversion (black lines) reproduce the input model quite well. The discrepancy lies mainly near
the boundaries of sharp transition. The inversion tends to produce a gradual increase at shallower depth. This is in part due
to our spline interpolation, but it is a problem that cannot be
avoided without dense sampling of the inner core along different
directions.

3.4. Synthetic test

Fig. 11 shows the result of one synthetic test that we performed
using the same data set, parameterization, and inversion procedure.
The input model (gray lines) includes some important features of

Fig. 13. Distributions of raw residuals (after correcting for the 1D model AK135)
(dashed), the residuals after the mantle correction (grey), and the residuals after
correcting for the inner core model and the mantle model (dark). The vertical axis
is the number of observations in a sliding window with the window width of 0.5 s
and the sliding step of 0.1 s.

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X. Sun, X. Song / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 167 (2008) 5370

Fig. 14. Comparison of observed (grey crosses) ABDF and BCDF residuals and predictions (black circles) for our inner core anisotropy model. The observed residuals have
been corrected for the mantle model (see text). The data and the predictions are divided into different distance ranges and plotted as a function of the ray angle for QEH (left
panels) and QWH (right panels) hemisphere. It can also reproduce some of the complexities of the data, e.g., the data scatter in the QWH at distance 145153 , 156160 , or
165173 and ray angle 6080 .

4. Results
Our inversion results of the anisotropy coefcients are shown in
Fig. 12. Fig. 13 shows the distribution of the whole data set (not just
the summary rays) before and after correcting for the inner core
anisotropy. The distribution for the raw residuals (dashed curve)
is asymmetrical and bi-modal with the tail of positive anomalies
(greater than 2 s) coming from the polar paths. The distribution
after the mantle correction (grey solid curve) is also asymmetrical
and bi-modal. It reduces the residuals for equatorial paths (residuals from about 2 to 2 s), but does not change much the residuals

of the polar paths. The curve after the inner core inversion was
much more symmetrical. It reduces further the residuals of the
equatorial paths, but the major improvement is on the polar paths.
The sidelobe between 3 and 3.5 s in the raw residuals is mostly
from polar paths originated from SSI earthquakes. The residuals
are not completely corrected by our smoothed model and thus
shows up in the sidelobe between 1 and 1.5 s after the mantle and
inner core corrections.
The variances of the raw residuals, the residuals after mantle
correction, and the residuals after both mantle and inner core
corrections are 2.12, 1.93, and 0.71 s2 , respectively. Thus the vari-

Fig. 15. Averaged anisotropy coefcients in the two hemispheres as a function of radius. Note the anisotropy in QEH (left) remains weak to a great depth (around 700 km
below the ICB) while the anisotropy in the QWH (right) becomes strong at much shallower depth (around 200 km).

X. Sun, X. Song / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 167 (2008) 5370

63

Fig. 16. Averaged P-wave velocity of inner core for QEH (gray) and QWH (black) at different ray angle .

ance reduction from the mantle correction is 9.2%. The variance

reduction from the inner core model is 63.1% relative to the mantlecorrected data. The combined corrections for the mantle and the
inner core reduce the raw data variance by 66.5%. Separately, for
the equatorial paths, the mantle correction reduces the variance of
the raw data by 36.4%; the inner core model reduces the variance
of the mantle-corrected data very little (4.4%). For the polar paths,
the mantle correction reduces the variance very little (5.4%); the
inner core model reduces the variance of the mantle-corrected
data by 47.1%.
Fig. 14 shows a direct comparison of the predictions and the data
at larger distances (>145 ). The predictions agree quite well with
the observations at different distances and different hemispheres.
The model can even reproduce some of the ne structures in the
data, such as the scatters at the 145153 and 156160 distance
ranges in QWH near ray angle  = 60 . Below we discuss some of
the important features of the inversion results.
4.1. Hemispherical and depth variation
One of the most prominent features of our model is a long
wavelength, hemispherical pattern for the upper half of the inner
core. The longitudinal variation is quite obvious in the model plot
(Fig. 12). The anisotropy structures at the two western knots (220
and 340 longitudes) are quite different from the structure at the
eastern knot (100 longitude). Yet, the anisotropy structures at the
two western knots are quite consistent with each other, suggesting

a large-scale robust pattern. The distinction between the two hemispheres can be seen directly in the data as we discussed in the data
section, which is well predicted by our anisotropy model as shown
in Fig. 14. Note the hemispherical pattern, which previous studies
have referred to and we continue to refer to here, is not symmetrical. The QEH is in fact only about one-third of the hemisphere. The
exact division of the two regions cannot be resolved with the data
at hand.
To examine the hemisphere pattern more closely, we show various comparisons in Figs. 15 and 16. One important difference is
in the isotropic term (), i.e., the velocity perturbation at EW
direction. The velocity in the equatorial direction of QEH is faster
than that of QWH from the ICB down to about 200300 km
(Fig. 16). The structure is generally consistent with previous studies by Tanaka and Hamaguchi (1997) and Niu and Wen (2001).
The largest difference is near the ICB with the velocity difference
by about 0.5%. The value is slightly smaller than that of Niu and
Wen (2001) because of model smoothing in our inversion (see discussion below). The depth extent in our model (topmost 200300
km) is shallower than 500 km estimated approximately using the
turning point depth of the ray path in Tanaka and Hamaguchi
(1997).
A more prominent feature is hemispherical variation in
anisotropy. The average anisotropy amplitude () in QEH is less
than 1% from ICB all the way down to about 700 km depth (Fig. 15).
At the center of QEH or 100 longitude, the anisotropy is virtually
zero down to that depth (Fig. 12a). On the other hand, the aver-

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X. Sun, X. Song / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 167 (2008) 5370

Fig. 18. Ratio k as a function of radius from our anisotropy model. Plotted are averaged values for QEH (grey solid line) and QWH (dark solid line) as well as the values
at the two western knots (dotted and dashed lines). The ratio k is dened as / .
Fig. 17. Comparison of the anisotropy vs. ray angle at different depths of the inner
core. At a shallow depth (300 km), the QWH has much larger anisotropy than that
in the QEH. But when the depth increase to 800 km below the ICB (or about 420 km
in radius), the amplitude and shape of the anisotropy become similar in the two
hemispheres. The IMIC in our model has a different shape of anisotropy than that
in the upper inner core, with the minimum velocity at about 40 and maximums at
both equatorial and polar directions.

age amplitude in QWH is about 24% for the same depth range
(Fig. 15) except in the topmost inner core. The general pattern of the
hemispheric variation is consistent with previous studies (Tanaka
and Hamaguchi, 1997; Creager, 1999; Garcia and Souriau, 2000).
The depth of weak anisotropy in QEH in our model (700 km) is
deeper than 400 km in Garcia and Souriau (2000) but within the
uncertainties of 400700 km in Creager (1999).
The transition from isotropy to anisotropy in the topmost
inner core is rapid in the QWH. The amplitude increases from
0 at ICB to about 3% on average at 200 km below ICB (Fig. 15).
Because of model smoothing, the actual transition is likely to be
even sharper on average and much sharper in certain localities
(see further discussion below). One example is the region under
the Central America sampled by the path from SSI earthquakes
to Alaska and Canada, where the evidence for seismic triplication has been reported (Song and Helmberger, 1998; Song and
Xu, 2002). In QEH, however, the increase is slow because of the
small anisotropy amplitude at depth. Thus no seismic triplication would be expected from samples of this region and depth
range.
4.2. Inner inner core (IIC)
An important result from our inversion is the apparent change of
the form of anisotropy at a radius of about 600 km, slightly less than
half of the inner core radius. The details are presented in a separate
paper (Sun and Song, submitted for publication). The change of the
anisotropy form is generally consistent with the IMIC proposed by
Ishii and Dziewonski (2002). However, the change occurs in a much
shallower depth, which is more consistent with recent studies by
Cormier and Stroujkova (2005) and Cao and Romanowicz (2007).
We refer to the inner part as the inner inner core (IIC), and the outer
part as outer inner core (OIC).

Fig. 17 shows a comparison of the anisotropy at different

depths. The anisotropy amplitude varies strongly with hemisphere
and with depth as we discussed above. Furthermore, with a
closer examination, we can see the shape of the anisotropy as a
function of ray direction changes with depth. The IMIC embedded
in our model parameterization has greater velocities at both
equatorial and polar direction, and its minimum is at around
ray angle  = 40 . The shape of the anisotropy at depth 800 km
(radius 420 km) in either hemisphere is similar to that of the IMIC
(Fig. 17b). However, the shape at depth 300 km is quite different
(Fig. 17a). The velocity at 300 km depth in either hemisphere
changes little for ray angles  from 0 to 40 .
The change in the shape of the curves in the deeper part is caused
by the large amplitude of  relative to . The shape is controlled by
the ratio k= / , which was dened earlier by Garcia (2002b) (but
as the reciprocal of the ratio here). The ratio changes sharply from
about 0.3 in the outer part (OIC) to about 0.8 in the inner part
(IIC) on average at a radius of about 600 km over a depth range of
about 150 km (Fig. 18). The values at the two western knots as well
as the averaged values for the two hemispheres show the trend
consistently, suggesting the change is quite robust in our model.
It is not an artifact of our assumption of an IMIC (with a radius of
300 km) as the change occurs at the radius twice as large. We will
explore this issue further below.
4.3. Voigt velocity
We also calculate the Voigt average of the inner core (Fig. 19),
which is equivalent to the averaged velocity along all the ray directions of a single crystal (Creager, 1999). The perturbation of the
Voigt average is + (/3) + (8/15). Surprisingly, despite large
variation in anisotropy between QEH and QWH in the OIC, their
Voigt averages are similar (within 0.5%) at all depths (Fig. 19a).
The perturbations of the averaged Voigt velocities for eastern and
western hemispheres are 0.027 km/s and 0.041 km/s, respectively,
relative to AK135. This numbers are comparable to Creagers (1999)
results (0.035 km/s and 0.044 km/s, respectively, relative to AK135).
We t the Voigt average of the whole inner core using a second
order polynomial and the result is: vVoigt = 0.0948rn2 0.1874rn +

X. Sun, X. Song / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 167 (2008) 5370

65

Fig. 19. Voigt averages derived from our anisotropy model. (a) Perturbations relative to AK135. The difference between the two hemispheres is small at all depths, compared
to the large difference in anisotropy. (b) Absolute values as a function of radius. The Voigt velocity for the whole inner core (averaged over all longitudes) (dark solid line) is
a t to the 2nd order polynomial. Shown also are Voigt averages for QEH (dotted line) and QWH (dashed line), respectively, and the reference model AK135 (grey solid line).

11.3471, where vVoigt is the Voigt average in the inner core, and rn is
the normalized radius (rn = r/ric ) and ric =1217.5 (from AK135). The
Voigt average for the inner core is about 0.150.74% greater than the
1D reference model AK135 (Fig. 19b). This is not surprising because
the 1D model is derived from the travel-time data that are dominated by equatorial paths. The seismically derived Voigt average
provides a new reference for mineral physics studies of the inner
core It is a more appropriate reference than a 1D model such as
AK135 or PREM because of the strong but complex anisotropy of
the inner core.

5. Conclusion and discussion

We present a self-consistent model of the anisotropy of the inner
core using PKP differential travel times, 3D ray tracing, and spline
parameterization. The large-scale features of our results t the data
quite well and our synthetic tests suggest they are robust and can
be readily resolved by our data and inversion (Fig. 11). These features are generally consistent with most of the previous studies,
although there are some important differences in details, such as
the depth extent of the hemispherical differences and the radius

Fig. 20. Synthetic test similar to Fig. 11 but using 9 knots in the radial direction. No IMIC of uniform anisotropy is assumed in the model parameterization. (Top) Input model
(grey) and inversion results (dark) of the anisotropy coefcients at the three longitudinal knots. (Bottom) map views of the inversion results.

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X. Sun, X. Song / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 167 (2008) 5370

Fig. 21. Same as Fig. 12 but for an inversion with 9 knots in the radial direction without imposing an IMIC constraint. The knot spacing is similar to the previous inversion
with seven knots and a uniform IMIC (about 150 km).

of the IIC. The major features of the model are as follows. (1) The
inversion results show strong hemispherical and depth variation.
The isotropic velocity in the topmost inner core (200300 km or
so) is greater in QEH than in QWH. The anisotropy amplitude ()
is small (less than 1% on average) in QEH to 600700 km below
the ICB. The anisotropy is virtually zero down to that depth at
the center of QEH (or 100 longitude). In QWH, the anisotropy
increases at much shallower depth (about 100200 km below ICB)
to about 34%, then remains strong (24%) throughout the inner

core. (2) The OIC and IIC possess different forms of anisotropy. The
anisotropy form changes abruptly at the radius of about 600 km,
slightly less than half of the inner core radius. This is the result
of increased  amplitude relative to in the IIC. (3) The absolute value of and  is anti-correlated, which results in a nearly
uniform isotropic velocity (Voigt average) throughout the inner
core. Below we discuss the robustness of our model and various
tests on model parameterization, mantle heterogeneity, and 3D
ray tracing. We will also discussion the limitation, in particular,

Fig. 22. Polar views of k ratio as a function of radius and longitude from inversions with (left) and without (right) an IMIC, respectively. In both cases, k value changes at
about half radius of the inner core at all longitudes, producing a distinct IIC sphere. In the white area in the eastern hemisphere of the left panel, < 0.3% and the ratio is not
computed.

X. Sun, X. Song / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 167 (2008) 5370

67

Fig. 23. Comparison of inversion with (dark) and without (grey) mantle correction. Plotted are anisotropy coefcients as a function of radius for the three longitudinal knots.
The two inversions follow the same procedures in the selection of summary rays, model parameterization, and inversion formulation.

notable discrepancy with the data, for our model, which is highly
smoothed.
In our parameterization, we articially imposed an IMIC (Fig. 10)
because of limited data at near antipodal distances along different
directions. We now explore the inuence of such a constraint
on our inversion results. In our test, we parameterize the radial
direction using cubic splines with nine equally spaced knots from
the ICB to the center of the Earth, but do not impose an IMIC of
uniform anisotropy. The knot spacing is identical (about 150 km).
The longitudinal parameterization remains the same. With the
new parameterization, we conducted a synthetic test (Fig. 20)
for the same input model as before (Fig. 11) and a real inversion
using the same data and procedure (Fig. 21). The results of the
real inversion (Fig. 21) are very similar to the previous results
(Fig. 12). The main difference is in the innermost region of 300 km
radius, where the anisotropy diminishes approaching the center
of the Earth. The synthetic test (Fig. 20) shows the same features,
suggesting it is likely caused by the poor data sampling of the
innermost region. The test provided a motivation for our initial
assumption of an IMIC in our model parameterization.
Our conclusion of the existence of an IIC with a different form
of anisotropy is further supported by this new inversion. Fig. 22
shows a comparison of the k value (k= / ) from the two inversions.
The results are strikingly similar. The sharp changes start at the

similar depth (radius of about 600 km). In either case, the sharp
change occurs consistently at almost the same radius at different
longitudes, producing a distinct sphere of the IIC with a larger k
value in amplitude. The distinction in the anisotropy form between
the OIC and the IIC is robust in our data.
Our model has been corrected for mantle heterogeneity using
a mantle model as discussed above. However, one may question
the accuracy of the current mantle models, particularly in the lowermost mantle. The inuence of lowermost mantle structure on
PKP differential times are well-noted (Song and Helmberger, 1993b,
1997; Breger et al., 1999, 2000; Luo et al., 2001). As such, differential
PKP measurements have been used in the tomographic mapping of
the lowermost mantle (Karason and van der Hilst, 2001; Tkalcic et
al., 2002; Sun et al., 2007).
The recent MIT model (Li et al., submitted for publication), which
we based our mantle corrections on, has also included PKP absolute
and differential travel times. It achieves signicantly better variance
reduction than the corresponding earlier generation model by van
der Hilst et al. (1997).
To explore the inuence of mantle heterogeneity, we test an
extreme case: no mantle correction is made before the inversion.
We follow the same procedure in selecting summary rays, in model
parameterization, and in inversion formulation. Fig. 23 compares
the inversion results with and without mantle corrections. The

Fig. 24. Comparison of the 1st (grey) and 6th last iteration (dark) of the inversion for our inner core anisotropy model. Our initial model is a 1D reference model (AK135),
thus the display is a comparison of a linear inversion (1st iteration) and a non-linear inversion (last iteration).

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X. Sun, X. Song / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 167 (2008) 5370

Fig. 25. Comparison of the PKiKPPKP(DF) residuals with model predictions at distances 130143 . The predictions can generally reproduced the pattern of hemispherical
difference, but there is signicant discrepancy for those polar paths sampling QWH at larger distances. These data are mainly from stations in Canada and Alaska, sampling
the inner core beneath central America, where large anisotropy exists at shallow depth. The discrepancy is likely the artifact of model smoothing.

major features are very similar, although there are some differences, particularly in mid-inner core. The variance reduction is
55.4%, with respect to the raw data. The variance reduction for the
polar data is similar (53.4%); the variance reduction for the equatorial data is small (8.8%). Considering some strong anomalies in PKP
differential times of up to 4 s (or 2 s) from mantle heterogeneity
(Sun et al., 2007), the agreement between the two inversions are
remarkable. Fundamentally, the agreement can be understood from
the following two key observations. First, sensitivities of the data to
the mantle and the inner core structures are different. The sensitivity of the data to the inner core is direction dependent. With enough
coverage of the inner core from different directions, the mantle heterogeneity is averaged out when we try to extract the directional
dependence. Second, the polar-path anomalies are much greater
than the equatorial ones. The asymmetrical distribution of the raw
residuals (Fig. 13) shows that the polar-path anomalies will be very
hard to be explained by any mantle structure.
A major effort of this study is the development and implementation of the PBR 3D ray tracing (for an anisotropic inner core)
and the non-linear iterative inversion scheme. How do our inversion results change if we use only 1D ray tracing and a linear
inversion. Fig. 24 compares the results of the 1st and the 6th iterations of our inversion. The 1st iteration is based on the ray tracing
of the 1D reference model (AK135). The overall results and the
anisotropy patterns are in fact very similar, suggesting the stability of the inversion. The greatest differences occur where the
anisotropy changes most rapidly, near 200 km depth or so, and from
600 km in radius to the IMIC (at radius of 300 km). This is not surprising because the change of ray paths by 3D structure is expected
to be the greatest where the velocity changes most rapidly. The linear inversion overestimates absolute values of and  in the IMIC
by 29.9% and 15.0%, respectively, compared with the non-linear
inversion.
Despite the major robust features, our model, with the limited
data and parameterization and the use of the spline functions, is
undoubtedly a smoothed version of the inner core structure. This
is particularly true for any sharp boundaries in the inner core or
small-scale variations. It is clear from our synthetic test (Fig. 11) that
a sharp boundary will be smoothed out. Possible sharp transitions
(sharper than in our model) include the boundary in the topmost
inner core (from isotropy to strong anisotropy), the boundary

between OIC and IIC (change in the k value), and the boundaries
between QEH and QWH (change in the anisotropy strength).
For the topmost inner core under parts of the western inner core,
the transition from isotropy to anisotropy is likely even sharper
than in the model. Underneath the central America, evidence of
waveform triplication from SSI earthquakes to stations in Canada
and Alaska suggests that the change from isotropy to anisotropy of
up to 8% at the depth of about 200250 km (Song and Helmberger,
1998; Song and Xu, 2002). A good example of how well the inversion
model ts or does not t ne structure of the inner core is the CDDF
data set, which is sensitive only to the top 100 km of the inner core
(Fig. 25). Because the data set is small in terms of the number of
measurements and the amplitude of the differential time residuals, they can be overwhelmed in the inversion by other data sets
(BCDF and ABDF times) sampling deeper structures, which are
much greater in number and amplitude. Nevertheless, the model
can reproduce the hemispherical pattern in the differential time
residuals, although the predicted difference is smaller (Fig. 25).
However, an important discrepancy is the polar data (ray angle
 = 6070 ) sampling QWH at larger distances (>137 ), where the
data have no large anomalies but the predictions have signicant
positive residuals. Most of them are from stations in Canada and
Alaska sampling the Central America. The predicted positive residuals come from the strong anisotropy in QWH even in the top 100 km.
This is likely an artifact of model smoothing, which spreads a sudden jump in anisotropy to a shallower depth. Thus the CDDF data
would be more consistent with a model with a sharper transition
(greater change in anisotropy amplitude over smaller depth range)
at a greater depth in this region, as evidenced from the waveform
modeling (Song and Helmberger, 1998; Song and Xu, 2002).
The change in the k value from the OIC to the IIC could also be
even sharper than in our model. No strong evidence of waveform
distortion at greater distances has been found so far (Sun and Song,
2004; Cormier and Stroujkova, 2005). Possible waveform changes
are likely to be very sensitive to the ray directions, which requires
extra care to detect. For example, the velocity increase from radii
400 to 300 km in the equatorial direction ( = 0 ) may cause a
small waveform triplication, and the velocity decrease from radii
600400 km around  = 35 may in fact cause a shadow zone
defocusing effect. Polar directions, particularly along the eastern
hemisphere across the OIC/IIC transition, are probably the best

X. Sun, X. Song / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 167 (2008) 5370

candidate for detecting waveform changes because the velocity

change is the biggest.
Our anisotropy model will be useful in mapping the alignment
of the iron crystals in the inner core, which is responsible for the
anisotropy, and in understanding the physical mechanisms of the
preferred alignment, a still elusive goal two decades after the discovery of the inner core anisotropy. The fact that the OIC has large
lateral variation in anisotropy and yet small, if any, lateral variation in Voigt average and in the k value suggests that the OIC is
likely composed of the same type of iron crystals. Thus the seismic
anisotropy model can be used to map directly the crystal alignment
as we presented in a separate paper (Sun and Song, submitted for
publication). The different form of anisotropy in the IIC may suggest
either a different type of crystal alignment of a different iron phase.
The mapping of the inner core texture, however, critically depends
on our knowledge of the inner core iron phase(s) and its elastic
properties. Increasingly, the progress in this eld requires multidisciplinary effort, in seismology, as well as in mineral physics,
geodynamics, and geomagnetism studies.
Acknowledgements
Part of the data we used are legacy data kindly provided by
Ken Creager, Fenglin Niu, Barbara Romanowicz, Annie Souriau,
and Satoru Tanaka. Most of our own data were from IRIS DMC,
LDEO and Caltech WWSSN lm chip collections, and GEOSCOPE,
ORFEUS, GEOFON, NARS data centers. China Seismic Network data
were provided by China Earthquake Network Center (CENC). We
thank the insightful reviews from Satoru Tanaka and an anonymous
reviewer, which improve our manuscript greatly. This research
is supported by NSF EAR-0409251 and partially supported by
Knowledge Innovation Program of Chinese Academy of Science
(KZCX3-SW-131).
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