Explicit Fourier wavefield operators

Abstract

SUMMARY Explicit wavefield extrapolators are based on direct analytic mathematical formulae that express the output as an extrapolation operator acting on the input, while implicit methods usually require the calculation of the numerical inverse of a matrix to obtain the output. Typically, explicit methods are faster than implicit methods, and they often give more insight into the physics of the wave propagation, but they often suffer from instability. Four different explicit extrapolators based on Fourier theory are presented and analysed. They are: PS (ordinary phase shift), GPSPI (generalized phase shift plus interpolation), NSPS (non-stationary phase shift) and SNPS (symmetric non-stationary phase shift). A formal proof is given that NSPS in a direction orthogonal to the velocity gradient is the mathematical adjoint process to GPSPI in the opposite direction. This motivates the construction of SNPS that combines NSPS and GPSPI in a symmetric fashion. This symmetry (under interchange of input and output lateral coordinates) is required by reciprocity arguments. PS and SNPS are symmetric while NSPS and GPSPI are not. A numerical stability study using SVD (singular value decomposition) shows that all of these extrapolators can become unstable for strong lateral velocity gradients. Unstable operators allow amplitudes to grow non-physically in a recursion. Stability is enhanced by introducing a small (∼3 per cent) imaginary component to the velocities. This causes a numerical attenuation that tends to stabilize the operators but does not address the cause of the instability. For the velocity model studied (a very challenging case) GPSPI and NSPS have exactly the same instability while SNPS is always more stable. Instability manifests in a complicated way as a function of extrapolation step size, frequency, velocity gradient, and strength of numerical attenuation. The SNPS operator can be stabilized over a wide range of conditions with considerably less attenuation than is required for NSPS or GPSPI.