资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

Observed reversals in GNSS surface motions suggests greatly enhanced slab pull in the months preceding the great subduction earthquakes in Maule (Chile, 2010) and Tohoku-oki (Japan, 2011) of moment magnitudes 8.8 and 9.0.

Megathrust earthquakes are responsible for some of the most devastating natural disasters(1). To better understand the physical mechanisms of earthquake generation, subduction zones worldwide are continuously monitored with geophysical instrumentation. One key strategy is to install stations that record signals from Global Navigation Satellite Systems(2,3) (GNSS), enabling us to track the non-steady surface motion of the subducting and overriding plates before, during and after the largest events(4-6). Here we use a recently developed trajectory modelling approach(7) that is designed to isolate secular tectonic motions from the daily GNSS time series to show that the 2010 Maule, Chile (moment magnitude 8.8) and 2011 Tohoku-oki, Japan (moment magnitude 9.0) earthquakes were preceded by reversals of 4-8 millimetres in surface displacement that lasted several months and spanned thousands of kilometres. Modelling of the surface displacement reversal that occurred before the Tohoku-oki earthquake suggests an initial slow slip followed by a sudden pulldown of the Philippine Sea slab so rapid that it caused a viscoelastic rebound across the whole of Japan. Therefore, to understand better when large earthquakes are imminent, we must consider not only the evolution of plate interface frictional processes but also the dynamic boundary conditions from deeper subduction processes, such as sudden densification of metastable slab.

At the historic Shelter Island Conference on the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics in 1947, Willis Lamb reported an unexpected feature in the fine structure of atomic hydrogen: a separation of the 2S(1/2) and 2P(1/2) states(1). The observation of this separation, now known as the Lamb shift, marked an important event in the evolution of modern physics, inspiring others to develop the theory of quantum electrodynamics(2-5). Quantum electrodynamics also describes antimatter, but it has only recently become possible to synthesize and trap atomic antimatter to probe its structure. Mirroring the historical development of quantum atomic physics in the twentieth century, modern measurements on anti-atoms represent a unique approach for testing quantum electrodynamics and the foundational symmetries of the standard model. Here we report measurements of the fine structure in the n = 2 states of antihydrogen, the antimatter counterpart of the hydrogen atom. Using optical excitation of the 1S-2P Lyman-alpha transitions in antihydrogen(6), we determine their frequencies in a magnetic field of 1 tesla to a precision of 16 parts per billion. Assuming the standard Zeeman and hyperfine interactions, we infer the zero-field fine-structure splitting (2P(1/2)-2P(3/2)) in antihydrogen. The resulting value is consistent with the predictions of quantum electrodynamics to a precision of 2 per cent. Using our previously measured value of the 1S-2S transition frequency(6,7), we find that the classic Lamb shift in antihydrogen (2S(1/2)-2P(1/2) splitting at zero field) is consistent with theory at a level of 11 per cent. Our observations represent an important step towards precision measurements of the fine structure and the Lamb shift in the antihydrogen spectrum as tests of the charge-parity-time symmetry(8) and towards the determination of other fundamental quantities, such as the antiproton charge radius(9,10), in this antimatter system.

Precision measurements of the 1S-2P transition in antihydrogen that take into account the standard Zeeman and hyperfine effects confirm the predictions of quantum electrodynamics.