Multiparameter viscoelastic full-waveform inversion of shallow-seismic surface waves with a pre-conditioned truncated Newton method

Abstract

SUMMARY 2-D full-waveform inversion (FWI) of shallow-seismic Rayleigh waves has become a powerful method for reconstructing viscoelastic multiparameter models of shallow subsurface with high resolution. The multiparameter reconstruction in FWI is challenging due to the potential presence of cross-talk between different parameters and the unbalanced sensitivity of Rayleigh-wave data with respect to different parameter classes. Accounting for the inverse Hessian using truncated Newton methods based on second-order adjoint methods provides an effective tool to mitigate cross-talk caused by the coupling between different parameters. In this study, we apply a pre-conditioned truncated Newton (PTN) method to shallow-seismic FWI to simultaneously invert for multiparameter near-surface models (P- and S-wave velocities, attenuation of P and S waves, and density). We first investigate scattered wavefields caused by these parameters to evaluate the coupling between them. Then we investigate the performance of the PTN method on shallow-seismic FWI of Rayleigh wave for reconstructing all five parameters simultaneously. The application to spatially correlated and uncorrelated models demonstrates that the PTN method helps to mitigate the cross-talk and improves the resolution of the multiparameter reconstructions, especially for the weak parameters with small sensitivity such as attenuation and density parameters. The attenuation of Pwaves cannot be inverted reliably due to its negligible sensitivity on the Rayleigh wave. The comparison with the classical pre-conditioned conjugate gradient method highlights the improved performance of the PTN method and thus the benefit of accounting for the information included in the Hessian.