Nonisotropic radiation of the 2013 North Korean nuclear explosion

On 12 February 2013, North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test in the northeastern mountainous part of the country. The explosion reached magnitude mb = 5.1 being recorded at most of seismic stations around the world and becoming one of the best ever recorded nuclear explosions in history. Similarly, as other nuclear explosions buried in Nevada, Kazakhstan, or China, the 2013 North Korean explosion is characterized by a significant nonisotropic radiation. This radiation is manifested by distinct SH and Love waves in the wave field and is inconsistent with the model of a spherically symmetric source. We show that the Love waves are not generated by a tectonic earthquake triggered on a nearby fault structures but produced by asymmetry of the explosive source caused by presence of deviatoric stress in the surrounding rock. The retrieved moment tensor of the 2013 explosion is characterized by the isotropic component of 57 ± 5%, the double-couple component of 17 ± 9%, and the compensated linear vector dipole component of 24 ± 7%. The P, T, and N axes of the moment tensor are consistent with the principal axes of the regional tectonic stress in the Korean Peninsula. A comparison of waveforms and particle motions of the 2013 explosion and the previous North Korean nuclear explosion buried in 2009 indicates that the 2013 explosion was slightly more nonisotropic.

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