The effect of metastable pyroxene on the slab dynamics

Agrusta, R.; van Hunen, J.; Goes, S.

doi:10.1002/2014gl062159

The effect of metastable pyroxene on the slab dynamics

Agrusta, R.; van Hunen, J.; Goes, S.

Authors

R. Agrusta

Professor Jeroen Van Hunen jeroen.van-hunen@durham.ac.uk
Professor

S. Goes

Abstract

Seismic studies show that some subducting slabs penetrate straight into the lower mantle, whereas others seem to flatten near the base of the mantle transition zone. Slab stagnation is often attributed to an increase in viscosity and phase transformations in the olivine system. However, recent mineral physics studies showed that due to extremely low transformational diffusion rates, low-density metastable pyroxene may persist into the transition zone in cool slabs. Here we use a dynamically fully self-consistent subduction model to investigate the influence of metastable pyroxene on the dynamics of subducting oceanic lithosphere. Our results show that metastable pyroxene affects slab buoyancy at least as much as olivine metastability. However, unlike metastable olivine, which can inhibit slab penetration in the lower mantle only for cold, old, and fast slabs, metastable pyroxene is likely to also affect sinking of relatively young and slow slabs.

Citation

Agrusta, R., van Hunen, J., & Goes, S. (2014). The effect of metastable pyroxene on the slab dynamics. Geophysical Research Letters, 41(24), 8800-8808. https://doi.org/10.1002/2014gl062159

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Dec 6, 2014
Online Publication Date	Dec 20, 2014
Publication Date	Dec 28, 2014
Deposit Date	Jan 4, 2015
Publicly Available Date	Jan 22, 2015
Journal	Geophysical Research Letters
Print ISSN	0094-8276
Electronic ISSN	1944-8007
Publisher	Wiley
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	41
Issue	24
Pages	8800-8808
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1002/2014gl062159
Keywords	Subduction, Metastable pyroxene, Phase transition.

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Copyright Statement
Advance online version ©2015. The authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.