The traveltime perturbations for seismic body waves in factorized anisotropic inhomogeneous media

The traveltime perturbation equations for the quasi-compressional and the two quasi-shear waves propagating in a factorized anisotropic inhomogeneous (FAI) media are derived. The concept of FAI media simplifies considerably these equations. In the FAI medium, the density normalized elastic parameters a _ijkl ( X _i ) can be described by the relation a _ijkl ( X _i) = f ²( x _i ) A _ijkl, where A _ijkl are constants, independent of coordinates x _i and f ²( x _i) is a continuous smooth function of x _i . The types of anisotropy ( A _ijkl ) and inhomogeneity [ f ( x _i)] are not restricted. The traveltime perturbations of individual seismic body waves ( q ^P , qS 1 and qS 2) propagating in the FAI medium depend, of course, both on the structural pertubations [δ f ²( x _i)] and on the anisotropy perturbations (δ A _ijkl ), but both these effects are fully separated. The perturbation equations for the time delay between the two qS -waves propagating in the FAI medium are simplified even more. If the unperturbed (background) medium is isotropic, the perturbation of the time delay does not depend on the structural perturbations (δ f ²( x _i) at all. This striking result, valid of course only in the framework of first-order perturbation theory, will simplify considerably the interpretation of the time delay between the two split qS -waves in inhomogeneous anisotropic media. Numerical examples are presented.     

Computation of high-frequency seismic wavefields in 3-D laterally inhomogeneous anisotropic media

Summary. An algorithm for the computation of travel times, ray amplitudes and ray synthetic seismograms in 3-D laterally inhomogeneous media composed of isotropic and anisotropic layers is described. All 21 independent elastic parameters may vary within the anisotropic layers. Rays and travel times are evaluated by numerical solution of the ray tracing equations. Ray amplitudes are determined by evaluating reflection/ transmission coefficients and the geometrical spreading along individual rays. The geometrical spreading is computed approximately by numerical measurement of the cross-sectional area of the ray tube formed by three neighbouring rays. A similar approximate procedure is used for the determination of the coefficients of the paraxial ray approximation. The ray paraxial approximation makes computation of synthetic seismograms on the surface of the model very efficient. Examples of ray synthetic seismograms computed with a program package based on the described algorithm are presented.     

Numerical modelling and inversion of travel times of seismic body waves in inhomogeneous anisotropic media

Summary. Two approaches to travel-time computations in laterally inhomogeneous anisotropic media are presented. The first method is based on ray tracing in an anisotropic inhomogeneous medium, the second on the linearization procedure. The linearization procedure, which can be applied to inhomogeneous, slightly anisotropic media, does not require ray tracing in an anisotropic medium. Applications of linearized equations to the solutions of direct and inverse kinematic problems are discussed. A program package to perform the linearized computations for rather general 2-D laterally inhomogeneous layered structures is described and a numerical example is presented.     

Inversion of seismic data using tomographical reconstruction techniques for investigations of laterally inhomogeneous media

Summary. For the determination of lateral velocity or absorption inhomogeneities, methods such as the generalized matrix inversion and its damped versions, for example the stochastic inverse, are usually applied in seismology to travel-time or amplitude anomalies. These methods are not appropriate for the solution of very extensive systems of equations. Reconstruction techniques as developed for computer tomography are suitable for operations with extremely large numbers of equations and unknown parameters. In this paper solutions obtained with the BPT (Back Projection Technique), ART (Algebraic Reconstruction Technique) and SIRT (Simultaneous Iterative Reconstruction Technique) are compared with those obtained from a damped version of the generalized inverse method. Data of 2-D model-seismic experiments are presented for demonstration.     

Head waves in laterally heterogeneous media

Summary. A layer of constant thickness over a half-space is assumed, and the propagation of head waves is considered for the following two cases: (1) the P -wave velocity varies in the layer in the horizontal direction, and is constant in the half-space: (2) the P -wave velocity varies in the half-space in the horizontal direction, and is constant in the layer. In each case the horizontal velocity gradient is assumed to remain constant. The wave propagation is investigated in the direction of the gradient (direct profile), and opposite to it (reverse profile). Formulae for the travel times and the amplitudes are obtained on the basis of ray-theoretical considerations. Conditions are discussed for the discrimination in a field experiment between the case of a sloping boundary separating the homogeneous media, and the case of an intrinsic horizontal velocity gradient.     

Gaussian beams for surface waves in laterally slowly-varying media

Summary. Asymptotic ray theory is applied to surface waves in a medium where the lateral variations of structure are very smooth. Using ray-centred coordinates, parabolic equations are obtained for lateral variations while vertical structural variations at a given point are specified by eigenfunctions of normal mode theory as for the laterally homogeneous case. Final results on wavefields close to a ray can be expressed by formulations similar to those for elastic body waves in 2-D laterally heterogeneous media, except that the vertical dependence is described by eigenfunctions of 'local' Love or Rayleigh waves. The transport equation is written in terms of geometrical-ray spreading, group velocity and an energy integral. For the horizontal components there are both principal and additional components to describe the curvature of rays along the surface, as in the case of elastic body waves. The vertical component is decoupled from the horizontal components. With complex parameters the solutions for the dynamic ray tracing system correspond to Gaussian beams: the amplitude distribution is bell-shaped along the direction perpendicular to the ray and the solution is regular everywhere, even at caustics. Most of the characteristics of Gaussian beams for 2-D elastic body waves are also applicable to the surface wave case. At each frequency the solution may be regarded as a set of eigenfunctions propagating over a 2-D surface according to the phase velocity mapping.     

Solution of the inverse problem of seismology for laterally inhomogeneous media

Summary. The Backus-Gilbert method has been extended to the estimation of the seismic wave velocity distribution in 2-D or 3-D inhomogeneous media from a finite set of travel-time data. The method may be applied to the inversion of body wave as well as surface wave data. The problem of determining a local average of the unknown velocity corrections may be reduced to a choice of a suitable δ-ness criterion for the averaging kernel. For 2-D and 3-D inhomogeneous media the simplest criterion is to minimize a sum of 'spreads' over all the coordinates. The use of this criterion requires the solution (the averaged velocity corrections) to be represented as a sum of functions, each of which depends only on one coordinate. This is a basic restriction of the method. In practice it is possible to achieve good agreement between the solution and a real velocity distribution by a reasonable choice of the coordinate system.
Numerical tests demonstrate the efficiency of the method. Some examples of the application of the method to the inversion of real seismological data for body and surface waves are given.     

Synthetic body wave seismograms for three-dimensional laterally varying media

Summary. Two methods of computing body wave synthetic seismograms in three-dimensional laterally varying media are discussed. Both these methods are based on the summation of Gaussian beams. In the first, the initial beam parameters are chosen at the source, in the second at the beam endpoints. Both these variants eliminate the ray method singularities. The expansion of the wavefield into plane waves may be considered as the limiting case of the first approach and the Chapman–Maslov method as the limiting case of the second approach. Computer algorithms are briefly described and numerical examples presented. In the first numerical example, the comparisons of the two approaches, based on summing Gaussian beams, with the reflectivity method indicate that the computed synthetic seismograms are satisfactorily accurate even in the caustic region. The next example suggests that the two methods discussed can be simply and effectively applied to 3-D laterally inhomogeneous structures.     

Paraxial ray approximations in the computation of seismic wavefields in inhomogeneous media

Summary. Several important applications of the paraxial ray approximation (PRA) to numerical modelling of high-frequency seismic body wavefields are discussed. The PRA can be used to evaluate the displacement vector not only directly on the ray, as in the standard ray method. but also approximately in the vicinity of this ray. The PRA also offers simple ways of approximate evaluation of paraxial rays, situated in the vicinity of the central ray, and of two-point ray tracing. A very important application of the PRA consists in a simple, fast and effective Computation of body-wave synthetic seismograms in general, 3-D, laterally inhomogeneous, layered structures. Examples of synthetic seismograms for 3-D structures, computed using the PRA, are presented.