Zero-offset seismic amplitude decomposition and migration

Abstract

In an anisotropic medium, a normal-incidence wave is multiply transmitted and reflected down to a reflector where the phase-velocity vector is parallel to the interface normal. The ray code of the upgoing wave is equal to the ray code of the downgoing wave in reverse order. The geometric spreading, KMAH index, and transmission and reflection coefficients of the normal-incidence ray can be expressed in terms of products or sums of the corresponding quantities of the one-way normal and normal-incidence-point (NIP) waves. Here, we show that the amplitude of the ray-theoretic Green’s function for the reflected wave also follows a similar decomposition in terms of the amplitude of the Green’s function of the NIP wave and the normal wave. We use this property to propose three schemes for true-amplitude poststack depth migration in anisotropic media where the image represents an estimate of the zero-offset reflection coefficient. The first is a map migration procedure in which selected primary zero-offset reflections are converted into depth with attached true amplitudes. The second is a ray-based, Kirchhoff-type full migration. The third is a wave equation continuation algorithm to reverse-propagate the recorded wavefield in a half-velocity model with half the elastic constants and double the density. The image is formed by taking the reverse-propagated wavefield at time equal to zero followed by a geometric spreading correction.