Perfectly matched layer boundary conditions for the second‐order acoustic wave equation solved by the rapid expansion method

Abstract

ABSTRACTWe derive a governing second‐order acoustic wave equation in the time domain with a perfectly matched layer absorbing boundary condition for general inhomogeneous media. Besides, a new scheme to solve the perfectly matched layer equation for absorbing reflections from the model boundaries based on the rapid expansion method is proposed. The suggested scheme can be easily applied to a wide class of wave equations and numerical methods for seismic modelling. The absorbing boundary condition method is formulated based on the split perfectly matched layer method and we employ the rapid expansion method to solve the derived new perfectly matched layer equation. The use of the rapid expansion method allows us to extrapolate wavefields with a time step larger than the ones commonly used by traditional finite‐difference schemes in a stable way and free of dispersion noise. Furthermore, in order to demonstrate the efficiency and applicability of the proposed perfectly matched layer scheme, numerical modelling examples are also presented. The numerical results obtained with the put forward perfectly matched layer scheme are compared with results from traditional attenuation absorbing boundary conditions and enlarged models as well. The analysis of the numerical results indicates that the proposed perfectly matched layer scheme is significantly effective and more efficient in absorbing spurious reflections from the model boundaries.