Syllabus
* Models of the Earth's internal constitution - historical outline 18th-19th centuries - density models based on geodetic observations; seismology in the first half of the 20th century - wave phases, standard hodochrons, interfaces (CMB, Moho, inner core), Jeffreys-Bullen tables, 20°-discontinuity; Bullen's velocity and density models - Adams-Williamson's equation; continental drift and plate tectonics; computer era in seismology (surface waves, free oscillations, seismic tomography); mineral physics and geodynamical modelling.
* Free oscillations of the Earth
Historical remarks; basic axioms in continuum mechanics, the Cauchy and the Piola-Kirchhoff stress tensors and momentum equations, boundary conditions; linearized theory - relation between the Cauchy and the Piola-Kirchhoff stress tensors in a prestressed body and the momentum equation for a general model of the Earth; SNREI - toroidal and spheroidal oscillations; mode splitting due to asphericities.
* PREM
Data, anisotropy, resulting model.
* Postglacial rebound
Timescales of slow processes in the Earth - comparison of momentum equations and rheological behaviour; viscoelasticity and the Laplace transform; Love numbers and normal modes; relaxation times of basic modes; viscosity profiles of the mantle.
* Mineral physics
Mineralogical composition of the Earth's interior; Clapeyron's equation; shock waves experiments - Hugoniot's relations; characteristics of static experiments; phase transitions in the mantle in olivine and pyroxene-garnet groups and their relevance to 440km and 670km interfaces; state of the core - melting of iron.
* Global seismic tomography
Kinematic tomography - linearization; "local" and "global" parametrizations by boxes and/or spherical harmonics; minimizations of the misfit functional - overdetermined and underdetermined problems; global results for the mantle, D" (CMB) and the core; fate of lithospheric slabs and the lower mantle superplumes.
* Remarks on 3-D geodynamical modelling
Body forces - problems with the conversion of tomographic models into density anomalies; non-uniqueness and instability of the gravity inversion, couplings - lateral variations and nonlinearity of the rheology.
* Literature:
- G.F. Davies, Dynamic Earth, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1999.
- J.-P. Poirier, Introduction to the Physics of the Earth's Interior, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2000.
- D.E. James (ed.), Encyclopedia of Solid Earth Geophysics, Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, New York, 1989.
- Z. Martinec, Free Oscillation of the Earth, Travaux Géophysiques No. 591.
Annotation
History of the global Earth models. Free oscillations of the Earth - theoretical introduction.
PREM. Mineral physics under high pressures and temperatures.
Seismic tomography - global models. Three-dimensional density anomalies and mantle convection.