A closer look into slickensides: Deformation on and under fault surfaces

Accurate descriptions of natural fault surfaces and associated fault rocks are important for understanding fault zone processes and properties. Slickensides--grooved polished surfaces that record displacement and wear along faults-- develop measurable roughness and characteristic microstructures during fault slip. We quantify the roughness of natural slickensides from three different fault surfaces by calculating the surfaces power spectra and height distributions and analyze the microstructures formed below the slickensides. Slickenside surfaces exhibit anisotropic self-affine roughness with corresponding mean Hurst exponents in directions parallel-- 0.53 ± 0.07-- and perpendicular --0.6 ± 0.1-- to slip, consistent with reports from other fault surfaces. Additionally, surfaces exhibit non-Gaussian height distributions, with their skewness and kurtosis roughness parameters having noticeable dependence on the scale of observation. Below the surface, microstructural analyses reveal that S–C–C′ fabrics develop adjacent to a C-plane-parallel principal slip zone characterized by a sharp decrease in clast size and a thin (≤100 μm) nanoparticulate-rich principal slip surface (PSS). These microstructures are present in most analyzed samples suggesting they commonly form during slickenside development regardless of lithology or tectonic setting. Our results suggests that 1) PSS likely arise by progressive localization along weaker oriented fabrics 2) deformation along PSS's is energetic enough to comminute the rocks into nanometric grains, and 3) fault geometry can be further characterized by studying the height distributions of fault surfaces, which are likely to impact stress distributions and frictional responses along faults. •Fault surfaces exhibit a non-Gaussian self-affine roughness with scale-dependent skewness and kurtosis.•Progressive localization of strain along oriented fabrics give rise to slickenside structures.•Nanoparticulate layers are common on fault rocks regardless of lithology or tectonic setting.