Seismic modeling using the frozen Gaussian approximation

Abstract

We adopt the frozen Gaussian approximation (FGA) for modeling seismic waves. The method belongs to the category of ray-based beam methods. It decomposes seismic wavefield into a set of Gaussian functions and propagates these Gaussian functions along appropriate ray paths. As opposed to the classic Gaussian-beam method, FGA keeps the Gaussians frozen (at a fixed width) during the propagation process and adjusts their amplitudes to produce an accurate approximation after summation. We perform the initial decomposition of seismic data using a fast version of the Fourier-Bros-Iagolnitzer (FBI) transform and propagate the frozen Gaussian beams numerically using ray tracing. A test using a smoothed Marmousi model confirms the validity of FGA for accurate modeling of seismic wavefields.