Adjoint Slip Inversion under a Constrained Optimization Framework:
Revisiting the 2006 Guerrero Slow Slip Event
Víctor M. Cruz-Atienza

Instituto de Geofísica, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Geofísica, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Geofísica, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Corresponding Author:cruz@geofisica.unam.mx
Author ProfileAbstract
Understanding the fault behavior through geodetic data has an important
impact in our assessment of the seismic hazard. To shed light on the
aseismic evolution of a fault, we developed a new slip inversion
strategy, the ELADIN (ELastostatic ADjoint INversion) method, that uses
the adjoint elastostatic equations to efficiently compute the gradient
of the cost function. ELADIN is a 2-steps inversion algorithm to better
handle the slip constraints. In the first step, it finds the slip that
better explain the data without any constraints and the second step
refines the solution imposing the slip constraints through a Gradient
Projection Method. In order to get a physical plausible slip
distribution and to overcome the poor fault illumination due to scarce
data, ELADIN reduces the solution space by means of a von Karman
autocorrelation function that controls the wavenumber content of the
solution. To estimate the resolution, we propose a mobile checkerboard
analysis which allows to measure a lower bound resolution over the fault
for an expected slip patch size and an specific stations deployment. We
test ELADIN with synthetic examples and use it to invert the 2006
Guerrero Slow Slip Event (SSE). The later is one of the most studied
Mexican SSE that unfortunately was recorded with only 15 stations, so a
strong regularization is required. We compared our slip solution with
two published slip models and found that our solution preserves the
general characteristics observed by the other models such as an updip
penetration of the SSE in the Guerrero seismic Gap. Despite this
similarity, our resolution analysis indicates that this updip aseismic
slip penetration might not be a reliable feature of the 2006 SSE.