The structure of seismic discontinuities at depths of about 410 km and 660 km provides important constraints on mantle convection as the associated mineral phase transformations in the transition zone are sensitive to thermal perturbations. Teleseismic P-to-S receiver functions have been widely used to map the depths of the two discontinuities. In this study, we investigate the resolution of receiver functions in imaging topographic variations of the 410-km and 660-km discontinuities based on wave propagation simulations using a Spectral Element Method (SEM). We investigate finite-frequency effects of direct P waves as well as P-to-S converted waves by varying the length scale of discontinuity topography in the transition zone. We show that wavefront healing effects are significant in broadband receiver functions. For example, at a period of 10 to 20 seconds, the arrivaltime anomaly in P-to-S converted waves is about 50% of what predicted by ray theory when the topography length scale is in the order of 400 km. The observed arrival anomaly further reduces to 10-20% when the topography length scale reduces to about 200 km. We calculate 2-D boundary sensitivity kernels for direct P waves as well as receiver functions based on surface wave mode summation and confirm that finite frequency-effects can be properly accounted for. Three-dimensional wavespeed structure beneath seismic stations can also introduce significant artifacts in transition zone discontinuity topography if time corrections are not applied, and, the effects are dependent on frequency. / Master of Science

To investigate seismic resolution of deep mantle plumes as well as the robustness of the anti-correlation between bulk sound speed and S wave speed imaged in the lowermost mantle, we use a Spectral Element Method (SEM) to simulate global seismic wave propagation in 3-D wavespeed models and measure frequency-dependent P-, S-, Pdiff- and Sdiff-wave traveltime anomalies caused by plume structures in the lowermost mantle. We compare SEM time delay measurements with calculations based on ray theory and show that an anti-correlation between bulk sound speed and S-wave speed could be produced as an artifact. This is caused by different wavefront healing effects between P waves and S waves in thermal plume models. The bulk sound speed structure remains poorly resolved when P-wave and S-wave measurements are at different periods with similar wavelength. The differences in wave diffraction between the two types of waves depend on epicentral distance and wave frequency. The artifact in anti-correlation is also confirmed in tomographic inversions based on ray theory using Pdiff and Sdiff time delay measurements made on the SEM synthetics. This indicates a chemical origin of "superplumes" in the lowermost mantle may not be necessary to explain observed seismic traveltimes. The same set of Pdiff and Sdiff measurements are inverted using finite-frequency tomography based on Born sensitivity kernels. We show that wavefront healing effects can be accounted for in finite-frequency tomography to recover the true velocity model. / Master of Science