Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America; February 2005; v. 95; no. 1;
p. 212-224; DOI: 10.1785/0120040004
© 2005 Seismological Society of America
Approximate 3D Body-Wave Synthetics for Tomographic Models
Don V. Helmberger1 and
Sidao Ni1
1 Seismological Laboratory
252-21
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, California
91125
We present a new method of generating analytical synthetics for
tomographic-style models. These models are perturbations to a 1D layered model
involving changes in block velocities producing 3D images. The procedure is
broken into three steps: (1) construction of ray paths for the reference 1D
layered model, (2) generation of perturbed paths and the construction of 2D
synthetics in the plane containing the source and receiver, and (3) addition of
out-of-plane contributions (2D) from virtual receivers weighted by diffraction
operators. In step 1, the ray paths reflecting from the various interfaces are
established with ray parameter (po) and travel time
(to). Next, these values are corrected after adding the
velocity perturbations where ray segments in faster blocks grow relative to
slower blocks. This new set of ray parameters can be used to generate 2D
Cagniard-deHoop synthetics or WKM synthetics. Contributions from
virtual receivers at neighboring azimuths are added by convolving with
diffraction operators that are defined by the source duration and travel time to
the 3D structure. We suggest a particularly simple approximation based on four
virtual receivers which produces synthetics in agreement with 3D numerical
synthetics.
Copyright © 2009 by Seismological Society of America