Calculation of the amplitudes of elastic waves in anisotropic media in Cartesian or ray-centred coordinates

Abstract

We derive various expressions for the amplitude of the ray-theory approximation of elastic waves in heterogeneous anisotropic media, and show their mutual relations. The amplitude of a wavefield with general initial conditions can be expressed in terms of two paraxial vectors of geometrical spreading in Cartesian coordinates, and in terms of the 2×2 matrix of geometrical spreading in ray-centred coordinates. The amplitude of the Green tensor can be expressed in six different ways: (a) in terms of the paraxial vectors corresponding to two ray parameters in Cartesian coordinates, (b) in terms of the 2×2 paraxial matrices corresponding to two ray parameters in ray-centred coordinates, (c) in terms of the 3×3 upper right submatrix of the 6×6 propagator matrix of geodesic deviation in Cartesian coordinates, (d) in terms of the 2×2 upper right submatrix of the 4×4 propagator matrix of geodesic deviation in ray-centred coordinates, (e) in terms of the 3×3 matrix of the mixed second-order spatial derivatives of the characteristic function with respect to the source and receiver Cartesian coordinates, and (f) in terms of the 2×2 matrix of the mixed second-order spatial derivatives of the characteristic function with respect to the source and receiver ray-centred coordinates. The step-by-step derivation of various equivalent expressions, both known or novel, elucidates the mutual relations between these expressions.