Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: SUMMARY For imaging of seismic discontinuities at depth, reverse time migration is a powerful method to apply to recordings of seismic events. It is especially powerful when an extensive receiver array, numerous seismic sources, or both, permit adequate reconstruction of incident and scattered wavefields at depth. Reconstructing either the incident or scattered wavefield at depth becomes less accurate when relatively few recordings of seismic events are available. Here, we explore an inverse scattering approach to imaging discontinuities based on an adjoint method, employing sensitivity kernels (Fréchet derivatives) that represent jumps in material properties across seismic-discontinuity surfaces. When combined with ray-based requirements on scattering geometry, it constitutes a powerful approach to determining the locations and amplitudes of the discontinuities, recovering only those properties that can be resolved by a spatially limited source and/or receiver distribution. This is illustrated by synthetic examples with local sources followed by a field example in a subduction zone setting.
DOI: 10.1093/gji/ggae377
Authors: F F Pollitz, L Langer
Language: English
Subfield: Geophysics
Field: Earth and Planetary Sciences
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,377
OpenAlex ID: W4403794517