We analyze the rupture process of the 25 April 2015 Nepal earthquake with globally recorded teleseismic P waves. The rupture propagated east-southeast from the hypocenter for about 160 km with a duration of ~55 s. Backprojection of both high-frequency (HF, 0.2 to 3 Hz) and low-frequency (LF, 0.05 to 0.2 Hz) P waves suggest a multistage rupture process. From the low-frequency images, we resolve an initial slow downdip (northward) rupture near the nucleation area for the first 20 s (Stage 1), followed by two faster updip ruptures (20 to 40 s for Stage 2 and 40 to 55 s for Stage 3), which released most of the radiated energy northeast of Kathmandu. The centroid rupture power from LF backprojection agrees well with the Global Centroid Moment Tensor solution. The spatial resolution of the backprojection images is validated by applying similar analysis to nearby aftershocks. The overall rupture pattern agrees well with the aftershock distribution. A multiple-asperity model could explain the observed multistage rupture and aftershock distribution.
