Abstract
Seismic anisotropy in the Earth’s lower mantle, particularly around subduction zones, is commonly attributed to deformation by dislocation creep, yet much of the lower mantle appears nearly isotropic. This contrast complicates interpretations of mantle rheology. Here we report the temperature dependence of lattice preferred orientation in bridgmanite, the most abundant lower mantle mineral, through high-pressure deformation experiments at 25 gigapascals and 1700–2100 kelvin. Both iron-free and iron-bearing bridgmanite develop lattice preferred orientations across this temperature range, with distinct slip systems occurring below and above 1800 kelvin. Low-temperature fabric produces strong seismic anisotropy, whereas high-temperature fabric yields weak, near-isotropic signatures under horizontal shearing. These results provide a unified explanation for strong seismic anisotropy near subduction zones and globally near-isotropic behavior of the lower mantle. They suggest that dislocation creep could dominate lower mantle deformation while generating diverse seismic signatures, providing important understanding for lower mantle rheology and dynamics.
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The data supporting the findings of this study are presented in the paper or in the Supplementary Information file. The dataset used in this study was deposited in the Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18013117).
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Acknowledgements
This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 42225202), the JSPS KAKENHI (No. 22H00180) and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2024M753018). The two-dimensional X-ray diffraction measurements of bridgmanite were conducted at BL04B1, SPring-8, Japan (Proposal Nos. 2020A0702, 2020A1753, 2021A1108, 2021B1153, 2021B1503, 2022A2074, 2022B1229, 2022B1194, 2022B1716, 2023A1103 and 2023B1401). This study was performed using joint-use facilities of the Institute for Planetary Materials, Okayama University. We thank T. Yoshino for the financial support of the experiments and J. Zhang for helpful discussion. We thank Y. Zhang for help in preparing the (Mg0.9Fe0.1)SiO3 powder and HACTO group members for helping with the collection of the two-dimensional diffraction data. This study benefited from the codes developed by Y. Seto and D. Mainprice for acquiring the LPO pattern and calculating the elastic anisotropy of bridgmanite, respectively.
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L.G. performed the research, analyzed data and wrote the manuscript; D.Y. designed research, reviewed and edited the manuscript; N.T. collected the raw data, reviewed and edited the manuscript; Y.H. and S.K. collected the raw data; X. W. wrote, reviewed and edited the manuscript; and J. Z. reviewed and edited the manuscript.
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Guan, L., Yamazaki, D., Tsujino, N. et al. Dislocation creep may control bridgmanite deformation in the Earth’s lower mantle. Commun Earth Environ (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03212-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03212-9
