Teleseismic and GPS data were jointly inverted for the rupture process of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake. The inversion results show that it is a bilateral rupture event with an average rupture velocity less than 2.0 km/s along the fault strike direction. The source rupture process consists of three sub-events, the first oc- curred near the hypocenter and the rest two ruptured along the up-dip direction and broke the sea bed, causing a maximum slip of about 30 m. The large-scale sea bed breakage may account for the tremendous tsunami disaster which resulted in most of the death and missing in this mega earthquake.
