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Deep Slow Slip and Tremors (SSTs) are a combination of transient clusters of tectonic tremors and slow slip associated with extremely elevated fluid pressures. SSTs are thought to reflect a transition from viscous to brittle plate interface rheology and likely exert a first-order control on megathrust seismicity. Nevertheless, the deformation mechanisms governing the source of SSTs remain elusive. We herein document the occurrence of vein networks precipitated and brecciated within the deep SST region under blueschist-facies conditions. These lawsonite-rich vein sets exhibit extensive evidence of brittle deformation and are spatially related to localized, finely milled (cataclastic) shear bands. Petro-geochemical data reveal that brittle deformation was accompanied by the injection of several ultramafic-, mafic- and metasedimentary-derived fluid pulses, imprinting characteristic Cr, high field strength elements, and light over heavy rare earth elements positive anomalies in the vein breccias while leaching light rare earth elements from the cataclastic blueschist host. Our results suggest that metamorphic veins represent zones of mechanical anisotropy within the rock volume prone to localized shearing, brittle deformation and episodic injection of externally derived fluids. These networks demonstrate the importance of former vein sets as structural heterogeneities in triggering fluid-controlled brittle creep events. The combined effects of high pore fluid pressures and rheological heterogeneities in the form of metamorphic veins could trigger the nucleation and propagation of SSTs at the margins of this mechanically anisotropic environment, and thus determine where slip will take place along deep subduction interfaces.

An increasing number of seismological studies report transient seismicity clusters in the mantle wedge several kilometers above the subduction interface. Their physical significance with respect to subduction zone seismo-tectonics remains poorly understood. Jadeitites are known to form and/or be associated with mantle wedge serpentinites in the c. 30–70 km depth range, and thus may yield information on deformation mechanisms in this region of deep subduction environments. We herein document and compare brittle-viscous features recorded in jadeitites from Polar Urals (Russia), Kashin state (Myanmar) and Motagua fault region (Guatemala) – some of the most important jadeitite occurrences worldwide. In the Polar Urals we identified ultramafic-hosted pristine jadeitite-bearing veins c. 1 km above a Devonian paleo-subduction interface, interpreted as metasomatized former felsic dyke networks crosscutting the mantle wedge peridotites. Here, both jadeitites and associated amphibole-rich dark granofels display widespread brittle-ductile deformation fabrics such as shear bands, foliated cataclasites and breccias, cemented through dissolution-precipitation processes by omphacite and sodic amphiboles, a mineral assemblage typical of high-pressure–low-temperature subduction zone conditions. Electron probe and laser ablation ICP-MS mapping indicate that these brittle-viscous networks display a substantial metasomatic imprint highlighted in the dark granofels by variations in major and trace elements. Switches between viscous and brittle deformation patterns are attested by crystallographic-preferred orientations of jadeite in some of the shear zones that crosscut the host jadeitites. Strikingly similar mineral assemblages and deformation patterns were observed in the Kashin and Motagua samples. Observed deformation features in these localities can be classified into three categories (tectonic breccias, foliated cataclasites and hydraulic breccias), which may occasionally form in

The physical and mechanical processes rooted in the hydrated, serpentinized mantle above subduction zones remain insufficiently explored despite fundamental implications for our understanding of rheology and fluid recycling along subduction interfaces. Through a field-based investigation, serpentinized peridotites and jadeitite samples from a fossil forearc mantle in the Polar Urals (Russia) are studied here to document fluid–rock interaction processes in the high-P field, as well as the long-term evolution of the base of the mantle wedge. Petrographic, geochemical and microstructural observations reveal a complex, protracted evolution of the jadeitite-forming fluid pathway throughout the gradual cooling of the forearc mantle and increasing serpentinization of the host. It is shown that the jadeitite lenses in the studied locality (a) derive for a large part from a trondhjemitic dyke earlier emplaced in a warm subduction environment, and (b) record the cooling of the subduction hangingwall under high-P conditions associated with increasing host serpentinization. In the studied locality, the majority of the jadeitites formed at relatively high temperatures (>600°C) by the influx of Na–Al-rich, slab-derived metamorphic fluids that were drained along the base of the mantle wedge, parallel to the subduction interface. Changes in bulk-rock geochemical signatures and in paragenetic sequences also constrain the compositional evolution of the fluid channelized along this drainage, with an increasing sedimentary component. The phlogopite-bearing walls of the dyke exhibit Rb–Sr and Ar–Ar ages ranging between c. 405 and c. 390 Ma, a range partly overlapping within uncertainty with the previously dated zircons from the jadeitite core (410–⁠400 Ma; U–Pb). This study opens a unique window on the pristine structures formed above the plate interface by melting and fluid–rock interaction in the early subduction stages, as well as their evolution during secular cooling of the base of

The architecture and pressure-temperature conditions reached by a Cretaceous block-in-matrix serpentinite mélange exposed in the Zagros suture resemble those imaged in the active Mariana subduction zone. There, large magnitude-earthquakes (M>w9) have never been recorded but smaller events – of poorly-constrained physical origin – in the range M∼w3-6 are widespread. Field and petro-structural constraints led to a first report of blueschist-facies seismic fault-related rocks in the Zagros serpentinite melange, including breccias, foliated cataclasites and ultracataclasites; all observed within a foliated mafic metatuffaceous block embedded in serpentinite schists. Fine-scale petrological characterization of ultrafine-grained, fluidized cataclastic material reveals the presence of newly-formed glaucophane, lawsonite, phengite, albite and pumpellyite, an assemblage inferred (based on thermodynamic modelling) to have crystallized in the lower lawsonite-blueschist facies at ∼0.6-1.0 GPa and 230-300 °C. Extensional veins containing similar mineral assemblages are observed crosscutting the aforementioned rocks but are also identified as comminuted fragments in all fault-related lithologies. Crosscutting relationships among the multiple generations of fluidized ultracataclasites and brecciated blueschists suggest that episodic faulting and hydrofracturing were contemporaneous processes at ∼20-35 km depth, i.e., at similar conditions as reported for metabasalts expelled by Mariana serpentinite mud volcanoes. Mechanical modelling confirms that the studied fault-related features can only have formed under nearly lithostatic pore fluid pressure conditions, maintaining the system in a critically unstable regime that promoted recurrent seismic faulting, as monitored in the Mariana seismogenic zone. These fluids are likely associated with externally and deeply-generated fluid pulses that may have reached the seismogenic window, imprinting a Ta-Th-Nb-HREEs-enriched trace element sig

High pressure–low temperature metamorphic rocks from the late Paleozoic accretionary wedge exposed in central Chile (Pichilemu region) are characterized by a greenschist-blueschist litholog-ical association with interbedded metasediments that reached peak burial conditions of ~400 °C and 0.8 GPa during late Carboniferous times. We herein combine new extensive field observations, structural measurements, and geochemical and petrological data on vein and matrix material from Pichilemu transitional greenschist-blueschist facies rocks. The studied veins were first filled by albite, fol-lowed by quartz and calcite as well as glaucophane and winchite. Field, structural, and microscopic zoning patterns show that these rocks underwent a protracted sequence of prograde vein-opening events, which have been largely transposed to the main foliation before and during underplating in the basal accretion site near 25–30 km depth. While some of the earliest albite-filled vein sets may have formed after prograde breakdown of sub–green-schist facies minerals (<250 °C), our thermodynamic modeling shows that relatively minor amounts of fluid are produced in the subducted pile by dehy-dration reactions between 250 and 400 °C along the estimated geothermal gradient. It also confirms that the formation of interlayered blueschist and greenschist layers in Pichilemu metavolcanics is a consequence of local bulk composition variations, and that greenschists are generally not formed due to selective exhumation-related retrogression of blueschists. The early vein sets are a consequence of prograde internal fluid production followed by sets of hydrofractures formed at near-peak burial that are interpreted as a record of external fluid influx. We postulate that such a fractured sequence represents a close analogue to the high-Vp/Vs regions documented by seismological studies within the base of the seismogenic zone in active subduction settings.