Finite-frequency vectorial tomography: a new method for high-resolution imaging of upper mantle anisotropy

Amplitude measurements of the transverse component of SKS waves, the so-called splitting intensity, can be used to formulate a non-linear inverse problem to image the 3-D variations of upper mantle anisotropy. Assuming transverse isotropy (or hexagonal symmetry), one can parametrize anisotropy by two anisotropic parameters and two angles describing the orientation of the symmetry axis. These can also be written as two collinear pseudo-vectors. The tomographic process consists of retrieving the spatial distribution of these pseudo-vectors, and thus resembles surface wave vectorial tomography. Spatial resolution results from the sensitivity of low-frequency SKS waves to seismic anisotropy off the ray path. The expressions for the 3-D sensitivity kernels for splitting intensity are derived, including the near-field contributions, and validated by comparison with a full wave equation solution based upon the finite element method. These sensitivity kernels are valid for any orientation of the symmetry axis, and thus generalize previous results that were only valid for a horizontal symmetry axis. It is shown that both lateral and vertical subwavelength variations of anisotropy can be retrieved with a dense array of broad-band stations, even in the case of vertically propagating SKS waves.     

Sensitivities of seismic traveltimes and amplitudes in reflection tomography

Seismic traveltimes and amplitudes in reflection-seismic data show different dependences on the geometry of reflection interfaces, and on the variation of interval velocities. These dependences are revealed by eigenanalysis of the Hessian matrix, defined in terms of the Fréchet matrix and its adjoint associated with different norms chosen in the model space. The eigenvectors and eigenvalues of the Hessian clearly show that for reflection tomographic inversion, traveltime and amplitude data contain complementary information. Both for reflector-geometry and for interval-velocity variations, the traveltimes are sensitive to the model components with small wavenumbers, whereas the amplitudes are more sensitive to the components with high wavenumbers. The model resolution matrices, after the rejection of eigenvectors corresponding to small eigenvalues, give us some insight into how the addition of amplitude information could potentially contribute to the recovery of physical parameters.
In order to cooperatively invert seismic traveltimes and amplitudes simultaneously, we propose an empirical definition of the data covariance matrix which balances the relative sensitivities of different types of data. We investigate the cooperative use of both data types for, separately, interface-geometry and 2-D interval-velocity variations. In both cases we find that cooperative inversions can provide better solutions than those using traveltimes alone. The potential benefit of including amplitude-data constraints in seismic-reflection traveltime tomography is therefore that it may be possible to resolve the known ambiguity between the reflector-depth uncertainty and the interval-velocity uncertainty better.     

Calculation of electromagnetic sensitivities in the time domain

The speed of calculating sensitivities for 3-D conductivity structures for time- domain electromagnetic methods is significantly improved by applying the reciprocity theorem directly in the time domain. The sensitivities are obtained by convolving the electric field in the subsurface due to a transmitter at the surface with the electric field impulse response due to another transmitter, which replaces the original receiver. The acceleration compared to the classical perturbation method is approximately P/R , where P is the number of model parameters and R is the number of receiver positions. If the sensitivity has to be calculated very close to the receiver, approximate sensitivities can be obtained using an integral condition. Comparisons with the classical perturbation approach show that the method gives accurate results. Examples using transmitter–receiver configurations from a long-offset transient electromagnetics survey demonstrate the usefulness of sensitivities for the evaluation of resolution properties.     

Surface-wave group-delay and attenuation kernels

We derive both 3-D and 2-D Fréchet sensitivity kernels for surface-wave group-delay and anelastic attenuation measurements. A finite-frequency group-delay exhibits 2-D off-ray sensitivity either to the local phase-velocity perturbation  δ c / c   or to its dispersion  ω(∂/∂ω)(δ c / c )  as well as to the local group-velocity perturbation  δ C / C   . This dual dependence makes the ray-theoretical inversion of measured group delays for 2-D maps of  δ C / C   a dubious procedure, unless the lateral variations in group velocity are extremely smooth.