Adverse Effects of an Edge Diffractor in Seismic Reflection Interferometry

Abstract

To understand steeply dipping events in seismic reflection interferometry (SRI), we derived an expression that describes the difference in travel time (Δτ) from a diffractor to two receivers in two dimensions. For a fixed receiver interval, the expression shows that Δτ is zero when the diffractor is at the midpoint of the paired receivers, increases with an apparent velocity of half the medium velocity as the diffractor moves toward either receiver, and remains constant for a diffractor located on the same side of both receivers. The horizontal portion of Δτ is slightly skewed during the normal moveout correction, yielding a maximum peak of the horizontally stacked trace at a slightly smaller time than Δτ. Accordingly, the diffracted waves have an apparent velocity slightly higher than half of the medium velocity in a horizontally stacked image. This conformed to virtual data for an elastic two-layer model with a vertical boundary. We then generalized the expression to three dimensions, in which listric travel time curves were predicted for an oblique edge diffractor, a vertex diffractor offline from the receiver pair, or a buried diffractor. Based on both two- and three-dimensional analyses of the edge diffractor, we tentatively interpreted the linear and listric dipping events observed in the passive SRI image across the Korean Peninsula to have been caused by diffractors near the intersection of the profile and geologic boundaries.