The use of Love waves for the study of earthquake mechanism

Long-period Love waves of continental path were successfully used for the study of the mechanism of earthquakes. Wave forms were compared for earthquakes of similar size which occurred within a limited area and were recorded by the same instrument at a given station. The aftershocks of the Kern County earthquake of 1952 and the series of Nevada shocks during 1954 were studied, and the direction of lateral fault motion derived from Love waves was found to agree perfectly with that derived from the data on body waves. We also found a very definite fact which cannot be explained by postulating a single couple for an earthquake source and which strongly supports Honda's hypothesis of a pair of couples. This additional information from the Love wave data confirmed the belief that the fault plane solutions have great geotectonic significance, at least for the area studied.