| Abstract: | Utilizing shear-wave (S-wave) data acquired with compressional waves (P-waves) is becoming more common as joint imaging and inversion techniques improve. Interest in S-waves radiated from vertical sources and buried explosives exploits conversion to P-waves as primary reflections (SP-waves) for reducing acquisition costs and for application to legacy data. However, recent investigations overstate the extent of SP-wave illumination and show isotropic processing results with narrow bandwidth frequency and wavenumber data. I demonstrate that illumination with SP-waves is limited in general to near vertical polar angles up to around 30° or 35° for VP/VS of 2 or 3, respectively. At greater angles, S-waves are typically in the P-wave evanescent range and cannot excite SP-wave reflections. Contrary to recent claims, these sources for P-wave do not radiate SH-waves polarized in horizontal planes in all azimuths. I show these properties for isotropic media with radiation expressions for amplitude derived in vector slowness coordinates. Also, I extend these expressions to transversely isotropic media with a vertical symmetry axis to show agreement with synthetic seismic data that only quasi SV-waves are radiated and become more narrowly focused towards 45°. Furthermore, in orthorhombic media, synthetic data show that fast S1- and slow S2-waves polarized parallel and perpendicular to fractures may appear as SV- and SH-waves. For the partially saturated fracture model studied here, S1-wave radiation has broader azimuthal illumination than slow S2-waves, which are more narrowly focused in azimuth. These produce SP-wave splitting signatures on vertical component reflection data that are nearly identical to PS-wave signatures on radial horizontal component data. Separating these fast and slow SP-waves is an additional processing challenge. |
