A Computer Library for Ray Tracing in Analytical Media

Abstract

Ray tracing technique is an important tool not only for forward but also for inverse problems in Geophysics, which most of the seismic processing steps depends on. However, implementing ray tracing codes can be very time consuming. This article presents a computer library to trace rays in 2.5D media composed by stack of layers. The velocity profile inside each layer is such that the eikonal equation can be analitically solved. Therefore, the ray tracing within such profile is made fast and accurately. The great advantage of an analytical ray tracing library is the numerical precision of the quantities computed and the fast execution of the implemented codes. Although ray tracing programs already exist for a long time, for example the seis package by Červený, with a numerical approach to compute the ray. Regardless of the fact that numerical methods can solve more general problems, the analytical ones could be part of a more sofisticated simulation process, where the ray tracing time is completely relevant. We demonstrate the feasibility of our codes using numerical examples.