Body-Wave Imaging of Earth’s Mantle Discontinuities from Ambient Seismic Noise

Ambient seismic noise correlations are widely used for high-resolution surface-wave imaging of Earth's lithosphere. Similar observations of the seismic body waves that propagate through the interior of Earth would provide a window into the deep Earth. We report the observation of the mantle transition zone through noise correlations of P waves as they are reflected by the discontinuities associated with the top [410 kliometers (km)] and the bottom (660 km) of this zone. Our data demonstrate that high-resolution mapping of the mantle transition zone is possible without using earthquake sources.