Up/down and P/S decompositions of elastic wavefields using complex seismic traces with applications to calculating Poynting vectors and angle-domain common-image gathers from reverse time migrations

Geophysics ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 81 (4) ◽  
pp. S181-S194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenlong Wang ◽  
George A. McMechan ◽  
Chen Tang ◽  
Fei Xie
Keyword(s):  
Fourier Transforms ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Complex Data ◽  
Reverse Time ◽  
Reverse Time Migration ◽  
S Wave ◽  
Time Migration ◽  
Vsp Data ◽  
Poynting Vectors ◽  
Over Time

Separations of up- and down-going as well as of P- and S-waves are often a part of processing of multicomponent recorded data and propagating wavefields. Most previous methods for separating up/down propagating wavefields are expensive because of the requirement to save time steps to perform Fourier transforms over time. An alternate approach for separation of up-and down-going waves, based on extrapolation of complex data traces is extended from acoustic to elastic, and combined with P- and S-wave decomposition by decoupled propagation. This preserves all the information in the original data and eliminates the need for a Fourier transform over time, thereby significantly reducing the storage cost and improving computational efficiency. Wavefield decomposition is applied to synthetic elastic VSP data and propagating wavefield snapshots. Poynting vectors obtained from the particle velocity and stress fields after P/S and up/down decompositions are much more accurate than those without because interference between the corresponding wavefronts is significantly reduced. Elastic reverse time migration with the P/S and up/down decompositions indicated significant improvement compared with those without decompositions, when applied to elastic data from a portion of the Marmousi2 model.

Vector-based elastic reverse time migration based on scalar imaging condition

Geophysics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. S111-S127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qizhen Du ◽  
ChengFeng Guo ◽  
Qiang Zhao ◽  
Xufei Gong ◽  
Chengxiang Wang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Methods ◽  
Polarity Reversal ◽  
Reverse Time ◽  
Reverse Time Migration ◽  
S Wave ◽  
Converted Wave ◽  
Imaging Condition ◽  
Time Migration ◽  
Wavefield Separation ◽  
Wave Modes

The scalar images (PP, PS, SP, and SS) of elastic reverse time migration (ERTM) can be generated by applying an imaging condition as crosscorrelation of pure wave modes. In conventional ERTM, Helmholtz decomposition is commonly applied in wavefield separation, which leads to a polarity reversal problem in converted-wave images because of the opposite polarity distributions of the S-wavefields. Polarity reversal of the converted-wave image will cause destructive interference when stacking over multiple shots. Besides, in the 3D case, the curl calculation generates a vector S-wave, which makes it impossible to produce scalar PS, SP, and SS images with the crosscorrelation imaging condition. We evaluate a vector-based ERTM (VB-ERTM) method to address these problems. In VB-ERTM, an amplitude-preserved wavefield separation method based on decoupled elastic wave equation is exploited to obtain the pure wave modes. The output separated wavefields are both vectorial. To obtain the scalar images, the scalar imaging condition in which the scalar product of two vector wavefields with source-normalized illumination is exploited to produce scalar images instead of correlating Cartesian components or magnitude of the vector P- and S-wave modes. Compared with alternative methods for correcting the polarity reversal of PS and SP images, our ERTM solution is more stable and simple. Besides these four scalar images, the VB-ERTM method generates another PP-mode image by using the auxiliary stress wavefields. Several 2D and 3D numerical examples are evaluated to demonstrate the potential of our ERTM method.

From acoustic to elastic inverse extended Born modeling: a first insight in the marine environment

Geophysics ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-73
Author(s):  
Milad Farshad ◽  
Hervé Chauris
Keyword(s):  
Least Squares ◽  
Marine Environment ◽  
Computational Cost ◽  
Physical Parameters ◽  
Reverse Time ◽  
Reverse Time Migration ◽  
S Wave ◽  
Time Migration ◽  
Physical Density ◽  
Acoustic Approximation

Elastic least-squares reverse time migration is the state-of-the-art linear imaging technique to retrieve high-resolution quantitative subsurface images. A successful application requires many migration/modeling cycles. To accelerate the convergence rate, various pseudoinverse Born operators have been proposed, providing quantitative results within a single iteration, while having roughly the same computational cost as reverse time migration. However, these are based on the acoustic approximation, leading to possible inaccurate amplitude predictions as well as the ignorance of S-wave effects. To solve this problem, we extend the pseudoinverse Born operator from acoustic to elastic media to account for the elastic amplitudes of PP reflections and provide an estimate of physical density, P- and S-wave impedance models. We restrict the extension to marine environment, with the recording of pressure waves at the receiver positions. Firstly, we replace the acoustic Green's functions by their elastic version, without modifying the structure of the original pseudoinverse Born operator. We then apply a Radon transform to the results of the first step to calculate the angle-dependent response. Finally, we simultaneously invert for the physical parameters using a weighted least-squares method. Through numerical experiments, we first illustrate the consequences of acoustic approximation on elastic data, leading to inaccurate parameter inversion as well as to artificial reflector inclusion. Then we demonstrate that our method can simultaneously invert for elastic parameters in the presence of complex uncorrelated structures, inaccurate background models, and Gaussian noisy data.

Reducing artifacts of elastic reverse time migration by the deprimary technique

Geophysics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 83 (6) ◽  
pp. S569-S577 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yang Zhao ◽  
Houzhu Zhang ◽  
Jidong Yang ◽  
Tong Fei
Keyword(s):  
Complex Function ◽  
Noise Removal ◽  
Pure Mode ◽  
Reverse Time ◽  
Reverse Time Migration ◽  
S Wave ◽  
Imaging Condition ◽  
Velocity Models ◽  
Time Migration ◽  
Wavefield Decomposition

Using the two-way elastic-wave equation, elastic reverse time migration (ERTM) is superior to acoustic RTM because ERTM can handle mode conversions and S-wave propagations in complex realistic subsurface. However, ERTM results may not only contain classical backscattering noises, but they may also suffer from false images associated with primary P- and S-wave reflections along their nonphysical paths. These false images are produced by specific wave paths in migration velocity models in the presence of sharp interfaces or strong velocity contrasts. We have addressed these issues explicitly by introducing a primary noise removal strategy into ERTM, in which the up- and downgoing waves are efficiently separated from the pure-mode vector P- and S-wavefields during source- and receiver-side wavefield extrapolation. Specifically, we investigate a new method of vector wavefield decomposition, which allows us to produce the same phases and amplitudes for the separated P- and S-wavefields as those of the input elastic wavefields. A complex function involved with the Hilbert transform is used in up- and downgoing wavefield decomposition. Our approach is cost effective and avoids the large storage of wavefield snapshots that is required by the conventional wavefield separation technique. A modified dot-product imaging condition is proposed to produce multicomponent PP-, PS-, SP-, and SS-images. We apply our imaging condition to two synthetic models, and we demonstrate the improvement on the image quality of ERTM.

Imaging conditions for elastic reverse time migration

Geophysics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. S95-S111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Zhang ◽  
Ying Shi
Keyword(s):  
Decomposition Method ◽  
Inner Product ◽  
Reverse Time ◽  
Reverse Time Migration ◽  
S Wave ◽  
Imaging Condition ◽  
Subsurface Structures ◽  
Time Migration ◽  
Imaging Conditions ◽  
Wave Modes

Elastic reverse time migration (RTM) has the ability to retrieve accurately migrated images of complex subsurface structures by imaging the multicomponent seismic data. However, the imaging condition applied in elastic RTM significantly influences the quality of the migrated images. We evaluated three kinds of imaging conditions in elastic RTM. The first kind of imaging condition involves the crosscorrelation between the Cartesian components of the particle-velocity wavefields to yield migrated images of subsurface structures. An alternative crosscorrelation imaging condition between the separated pure wave modes obtained by a Helmholtz-like decomposition method could produce reflectivity images with explicit physical meaning and fewer crosstalk artifacts. A drawback of this approach, though, was that the polarity reversal of the separated S-wave could cause destructive interference in the converted-wave image after stacking over multiple shots. Unlike the conventional decomposition method, the elastic wavefields can also be decomposed in the vector domain using the decoupled elastic wave equation, which preserves the amplitude and phase information of the original elastic wavefields. We have developed an inner-product imaging condition to match the vector-separated P- and S-wave modes to obtain scalar reflectivity images of the subsurface. Moreover, an auxiliary P-wave stress image can supplement the elastic imaging. Using synthetic examples with a layered model, the Marmousi 2 model, and a fault model, we determined that the inner-product imaging condition has prominent advantages over the other two imaging conditions and generates images with preserved amplitude and phase attributes.

Imaging reflection-blind areas using transmitted PS-waves

Geophysics ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 71 (6) ◽  
pp. S241-S250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yi Luo ◽  
Qinglin Liu ◽  
Yuchun E. Wang ◽  
Mohammed N. AlFaraj
Keyword(s):  
Mode Conversion ◽  
Imaging Techniques ◽  
Reverse Time ◽  
Reverse Time Migration ◽  
Reflected Waves ◽  
Prestack Migration ◽  
Reflection Data ◽  
Time Migration ◽  
Transmitted Waves ◽  
Vsp Data

We illustrate the use of mode-converted transmitted (e.g., PS- or SP-) waves in vertical seismic profiling (VSP) data for imaging areas above receivers where reflected waves cannot illuminate. Three depth-domain imaging techniques — move-out correction, common-depth-point (CDP) mapping, and prestack migration — are described and used for imag-ing the transmitted waves. Moveout correction converts an offset VSP trace into a zero-offset trace. CDP mapping maps each sample on an input trace to the location where the mode conversion occurs. For complex media, prestack migration (e.g., reverse-time migration) is used. By using both synthetic and field VSP data, we demonstrate that images derived from transmissions complement those from reflections. As an important application, we show that transmitted waves can illuminate zones above highly de-viated or horizontal wells, a region not imaged by reflection data. Because all of these benefits are obtained without extra data acquisition cost, we believe transmission imag-ing techniques will become widely adopted by the oil in-dustry.

Elastic reverse time migration of marine walk away VSP data

1996 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Hokstad ◽  
R. Mittet ◽  
M. Landrø
Keyword(s):  
Walk Away ◽  
Reverse Time ◽  
Reverse Time Migration ◽  
Time Migration ◽  
Vsp Data

Surface-offset gathers from elastic reverse time migration and velocity analysis

Geophysics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 85 (1) ◽  
pp. S47-S64
Author(s):  
Yang Zhao ◽  
Tao Liu ◽  
Xueyi Jia ◽  
Hongwei Liu ◽  
Zhiguang Xue ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Velocity Ratio ◽  
Computational Cost ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Velocity Estimation ◽  
Reverse Time ◽  
Reverse Time Migration ◽  
S Wave ◽  
Time Migration ◽  
The Common ◽  
Wave Decomposition

Angle-domain common-image gathers (ADCIGs) from elastic reverse time migration (ERTM) are valuable tools for seismic elastic velocity estimation. Traditional ADCIGs are based on the concept of common-offset domains, but common-shot domain implementations are often favored for computational cost considerations. Surface-offset gathers (SOGs) built from common-offset migration may serve as an alternative to the common-shot ADCIGs. We have developed a theoretical kinematic framework between these two domains, and we determined that the common SOG gives an alternative measurement of kinematic correctness in the presence of incorrect velocity. Specifically, we exploit analytical expressions for the image misposition between these two domains, with respect to the traveltime perturbation caused by velocity errors. Four formulations of the PP and PS residual moveout functions are derived and provide insightful information of the velocity error, angle, and PS velocity ratio contained in ERTM gathers. The analytical solutions are validated with homogeneous examples with a series of varied parameters. We found that the SOGs may perform in the way of simplicity and linearity as an alternative to the common-shot migration. To make a full comparison with ADCIGs, we have developed a cost-effective workflow of ERTM SOGs. A fast vector P- and S-wave decomposition can be obtained via spatial gradients at selected time steps. A selected ERTM imaging condition is then modified in which the migration is done by offset groups between each source and receiver pair for each P- and S-wave decomposition. Two synthetic (marine and land) examples are used to demonstrate the feasibility of our methods.

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