Helmholtz tomography of ambient noise surface wave data to estimate Scholte wave phase velocity at Valhall Life of the Field

Abstract

We applied the Helmholtz tomography technique to 6.5 hours of continuous seismic noise record data set of the Valhall Life of Field network. This network, that has 2320 receivers, allows us to perform a multifrequency, high-resolution, ambient-noise Scholte wave phase velocity tomography at Valhall. First, we computed crosscorrelations between all possible pairs of receivers to convert every station into a virtual source recorded by all other receivers. Our next step was to measure phase traveltimes and spectral amplitudes at different periods from crosscorrelations between stations separated by distances between two and six wavelengths. This is done in a straightforward fashion in the Fourier domain. Then, we interpolated these measurements onto a regular grid and computed local gradients of traveltimes and local Laplacians of the amplitude to infer local phase velocities using a frequency dependent Eikonal equation. This procedure was repeated for all 2320 virtual sources and final phase velocities were estimated as statistical average from all these measurements at each grid points. The resulting phase velocities for periods between 0.65 and 1.6 s demonstrate a significant dispersion with an increase of the phase velocities at longer periods. Their lateral distribution is found in very good agreement with previous ambient noise tomography done at Valhall as well as with a full waveform inversion P-wave model computed from an active seismic data set. We put effort into assessing the spatial resolution of our tomography with checkerboard tests, and we discuss the influence of the interpolation methods on the quality of our final models.