Enhancing low-wavenumber information in RWI using energy norm Born scattering

Abstract

Full waveform inversion (FWI) plays a central role in the field of exploration geophysics due to its potential in recovering the properties of subsurface at a high resolution. A starting model with ample long-wavelength components is essential for the success of most FWI algorithms. Reflection waveform inversion (RWI) is one popular way to invert for the long-wavelength velocity components from the short offset seismic data by decomposing the gradient of FWI into migration and tomographic terms. However, the transmitted part of Born scattering in conventional RWI still produces high-wavenumber artifacts, which would hinder its convergence. Thus, an efficient non-transmission energy norm born scattering is used in RWI to overcome the drawbacks of conventional RWI. We use numerical examples to show that the energy norm born scattering can provide clean transmission energy from the reflector and enhance the low-wavenumber information in the RWI gradient.