A methodological approach towards high-resolution surface wave imaging of the San Jacinto Fault Zone using ambient-noise recordings at a spatially dense array

International audienceWe present a new technique for deriving detailed information on seismic velocities of the subsurface material from continuous ambient noise recorded by spatially dense seismic arrays. This method uses iterative double beamforming between various subarrays to extract surface wave contributions from the ambient-noise data in complex environments with unfavourable noise-source distributions. The iterative double beamforming extraction makes it possible to retrieve large amounts of Rayleigh wave traveltime information in a wide frequency band. The method is applied to data recorded by a highly dense Nodal array with 1108 vertical geophones, centred on the damage zone of the Clark branch of the San Jacinto Fault Zone south of Anza, California. The array covers a region of ∼650 × 700 m 2 , with instrument spacing of 10–30 m, and continuous recording at 500 samples s −1 over 30 d in 2014. Using this iterative double beamforming on subarrays of 25 sensors and cross-correlations between all of the station pairs, we separate surface waves from body waves that are abundant in the raw cross-correlation data. Focusing solely on surface waves, maps of traveltimes are obtained at different frequencies with unprecedented accuracy at each point of a 15-m-spacing grid. Group velocity inversions at 2–4 Hz reveal depth and lateral variations in the structural properties within and around the San Jacinto Fault Zone in the study area. This method can be used over wider frequency ranges and can be combined with other imaging techniques, such as eikonal tomography, to provide unprecedented detailed structural images of the subsurface material