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NATURE GEOSCIENCE | LETTER

Equatorial anisotropy in the inner part of Earths inner core from autocorrelation
of earthquake coda
Tao Wang,Xiaodong Song& Han H. Xia
Nature Geoscience (2015) doi:10.1038/ngeo2354
Received 07 June 2014 Accepted 02 January 2015 Published online 09 February 2015
The Earths solid inner core exhibits strong anisotropy1, 2, 3, 4, 5, with
alignment of iron crystals6. Variations in the anisotropic structure, laterally and with depth7, 8, 9, 10, 11,
rotation12 and offer clues into the formation and dynamics of the inner core13, 14.
cylindrical anisotropy in which the symmetry axis is parallel to the Earths spin axis. An
has been suggested15, but there is considerable uncertainty regarding its existence and characteristics16, 17, 18,
of earthquake coda measured by global broadband seismic arrays between 1992 and 2012, and find that the differential travel times of two types of
core-penetrating waves vary at low latitudes by up to 10 s. Our findings are consistent with seismic anisotropy in the innermost inner core that has a
fast axis near the equatorial plane through Central America and Southeast Asia, in contrast to the northsouth alignment of anisotropy in the outer
inner core. The different orientations and forms of anisotropy may represent a shift in the evolution of the inner core.

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Author information
Affiliations
Institute of Geophysics and Geodynamics, and State Key Laboratory for Mineral Deposits Research, School of Earth Sciences and
Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210046, China
Tao Wang,Xiaodong Song &Han H. Xia
Department of Geology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois 61820, USA
Tao Wang &Xiaodong Song
Contributions
X.S. designed the project, performed data analysis, and wrote the paper. T.W. carried out data processing, performed data analysis, and contributed
to the paper writing. H.H.X. contributed to data processing.
Competing financial interests
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Corresponding author
Correspondence to: Xiaodong Song

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