Accurately Stable Q-Compensated Reverse-Time Migration Scheme for Heterogeneous Viscoelastic Media

Abstract

The development of multi-component seismic acquisition technology creates new possibilities for the high-precision imaging of complex media. Compared to the scalar acoustic wave equation, the elastic wave equation takes the information of P-waves, S-waves, and converted waves into account simultaneously, enabling accurate description of actual seismic propagation. However, inherent attenuation is one of the important factors that restricts multi-component high-precision migration imaging. Its influence is mainly reflected in the following three ways: first, the attenuation of the amplitude energy makes the deep structure display unclear; second, phase distortion introduces errors to the positioning of underground structures; and third, the loss of high frequency components reduces imaging resolution. Therefore, it is crucial to fully consider the absorption and attenuation characteristics of the real Earth during seismic modeling and imaging. This paper aims to develop an accurate attenuation compensation reverse-time migration scheme for complex heterogeneous viscoelastic media. We first utilize a novel viscoelastic wave equation with decoupled fractional Laplacians to depict the Earth’s attenuation behavior. Then, an adaptive stable attenuation compensation operator is developed to realize high-precision attenuation compensation imaging. Several synthetic and field data analyses verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.