ABSTRACT
Although teleseismic waveform tomography can provide high-resolution images of the deep mantle, it is still unrealistic to numerically simulate the whole domain of seismic wave propagation due to the huge amount of computation. In this article, we develop a new three-dimensional hybrid method to address this issue, which couples the modified frequency–wavenumber (FK) method with the 3D time–space optimized symplectic (TSOS) method. First, the FK method, which is used to calculate the semianalytical incident wavefields in the layered reference model, is modified to compute the wavefields efficiently with a significantly low-memory requirement. Second, 3D TSOS method is developed to model the seismic wave propagating in the local 3D heterogeneous domain. The low memory requirement of the modified FK method and the high accuracy of the TSOS method make it feasible to obtain highly accurate synthetic seismograms efficiently. A crust–upper mantle model for P-, SV-, and SH-wave incidences is calculated to benchmark the accuracy and efficiency of the 3D optimized FK-TSOS method. Numerical experiments for 3D models with heterogeneities, undulated discontinuous interfaces, and realistic model in eastern Tibet, illustrate the capability of hybrid method to accurately capture the scattered waves caused by heterogeneities in 3D medium. The 3D optimized FK-TSOS method developed shows low-memory requirement, high accuracy, and high efficiency, which makes it be a promising forward method to further apply to high-resolution mantle structure images beneath seismic array.
