An adaptive subspace trust-region method for frequency-domain seismic full waveform inversion

Abstract

Full waveform inversion is currently considered as a promising seismic imaging method to obtain high-resolution and quantitative images of the subsurface. It is a nonlinear ill-posed inverse problem, the main difficulty of which that prevents the full waveform inversion from widespread applying to real data is the sensitivity to incorrect initial models and noisy data. Local optimization theories including Newton's method and gradient method always lead the convergence to local minima, while global optimization algorithms such as simulated annealing are computationally costly. To confront this issue, in this paper we investigate the possibility of applying the trust-region method to the full waveform inversion problem. Different from line search methods, trust-region methods force the new trial step within a certain neighborhood of the current iterate point. Theoretically, the trust-region methods are reliable and robust, and they have very strong convergence properties. The capability of this inversion technique is tested with the synthetic Marmousi velocity model and the SEG/EAGE Salt model. Numerical examples demonstrate that the adaptive subspace trust-region method can provide solutions closer to the global minima compared to the conventional Approximate Hessian approach and the L-BFGS method with a higher convergence rate. In addition, the match between the inverted model and the true model is still excellent even when the initial model deviates far from the true model. Inversion results with noisy data also exhibit the remarkable capability of the adaptive subspace trust-region method for low signal-to-noise data inversions. Promising numerical results suggest this adaptive subspace trust-region method is suitable for full waveform inversion, as it has stronger convergence and higher convergence rate.