Poynting and polarization vectors mixed imaging condition of source time‐reversal imaging

Abstract

AbstractSource time‐reversal imaging based on wave equation theory can achieve high‐precision source location in complex geological models. For the time‐reversal imaging method, the imaging condition is critical to the location accuracy and imaging resolution. The most commonly used imaging condition in time‐reversal imaging is the scalar cross correlation imaging condition. However, scalar cross‐correlation imaging condition removes the directional information of the wavefield through modulus operations to avoid the direct dot product of mutually orthogonal P‐ and S‐waves, preventing the imaging condition from leveraging the wavefield propagation direction to suppress imaging artefacts. We previously tackled this issue by substituting the imaging wavefield with the energy current density vectors of the decoupled wavefield, albeit at the cost of increased computational and storage demands. To balance artifact suppression with reduced computational and memory overhead, this work introduces the Poynting and polarization vectors mixed imaging condition. Poynting and polarization vectors mixed imaging condition utilizes the polarization and propagation direction information of the wavefield by directly dot multiplying the undecoupled velocity polarization vector with the Poynting vector, eliminating the need for P‐ and S‐wave decoupling or additional memory. Compared with scalar cross‐correlation imaging condition, this imaging condition can accurately image data with lower signal‐to‐noise ratios. Its performance is generally consistent with previous work but offers higher computational efficiency and lower memory usage. Synthetic data tests on the half‐space model and the three‐dimensional Marmousi model demonstrate the effectiveness of this method in suppressing imaging artefacts, as well as its efficiency and ease of implementation.