Flexure of the ocean lithosphere from island uplift, bathymetry and geoid height observations: the Society Islands

Summary. The response of a stratified elastic medium can be conveniently characterized by the Green's tensor for the medium. For coupled seismic wave propagation ( P—SV or fully anisotropic), the Green's tensor may be constructed directly from two matrices of linearly independent displacement solutions. Rather simple forms for the Green's tensor can be found if each displacement matrix satisfies one of the boundary conditions on the seismic field. This approach relates directly to 'reflection matrix' representations of the seismic field.
For a stratified elastic half space the Green's tensor is used to give a spectral representation for coupled seismic waves. By means of a contour integration a general completeness relation is obtained for the 'body wave' and 'surface wave' parts of the seismic field. This relation is appropriate for SH and P–SV waves in an isotropic medium and also for full anisotropy.