First-arrival Tomography Using the Double-square-root Equation Solver Stepping in Subsurface Offset

Abstract

Double-square-root (DSR) equation can be viewed as a Hamilton-Jacobi equation describing kinematics of downward data continuation in depth. It describes simultaneous propagation of source and receiver rays assuming that they are nowhere horizontal. Thus it is not suitable for describing diving waves. This equation can be rewritten in a new form when stepping is made in subsurface offset instead of depth. In this form it can be used for describing traveltimes of diving waves in prestack seismic data. This equation can be solved using WENO-RK numerical scheme. Prestack traveltimes (for multiple sources) can be computed in one run thus speeding up solution of the forward problem. We derive linearized version of this new DSR equation that can be used for tomographic inversion of first-arrival traveltimes. Here we used a ray-based tomographic inversion consisting of the following steps: get numerical solution of the offset DSR equation in the background velocity model, back trace DSR rays connecting receivers to sources, update velocity model using truncated SVD pseudoinverse. This approach was tested on a synthetic model generating diving waves.