Strong scattering of short‐period seismic waves by the core‐mantle boundary and the P‐diffracted wave

We interpret the long‐tail‐in‐time (up to 3 minutes) decay of short‐period P diff as being due to multiple scattering within D″, which, for this purpose, is assumed to be an heterogeneous region with a low velocity zone just next to the core‐mantle boundary. A simple multiple scattering theory, generalized for a two‐dimensional spherical geometry, provides good agreement with observations for values of the scattering and attenuation coefficients (η) of about 10 −3 km −1 .