Non-artifact vector P- and S-wave separation for elastic reverse time migration

Elastic reverse time migration(RTM)uses the elastic wave equation to extrapolate multicomponent seismic data to the subsurface and separate the elastic wavefield into P-and S-waves.P-and S-wave separation is a necessary step in elastic RTM to avoid crosstalk between coupled wavefields.However,the current curl-divergence operator-based separation method has a polarity reversal problem in PS imaging,and vector separation methods often have separation artifacts at the interface,which affects the quality of the imaging stack.We propose a non-artifact P-and S-wave separation method based on the first-order velocity-strain equation.This equation is used for wavefield extrapolation and separation in the first-order staggered-grid finite-difference scheme,and the storage and calculation amounts are consistent with the classical first-order velocity-stress equation.The separation equation does not calculate the partial derivatives of the elastic parameters,and thus,there is no artifact in the separated Pand S-waves.During wavefield extrapolation,the dynamic characteristics of the reflected wave undergo some changes,but the transmitted wavefield is accurate;therefore,it does not affect the dynamic characteristics of the final migration imaging.Through numerical examples of 2 D simple models,part SEAM model,BP model,and 3 D 4-layer model,different wavefield separation methods and corresponding elastic RTM imaging results are analyzed.We found that the velocity-strain based elastic RTM can image subsurface structures well,without spike artifacts caused by separation artifacts,and without polarity reversal phenomenon of the PS imaging.

Viscoacoustic generalized screen propagator in constant-Q model

When seismic waves propagate through the geological formation,there is a significant loss of energy and a decrease in imaging resolution,because of the viscoacoustic properties of subsurface medium.This profoundly impacts seismic wavefield propagation,imaging and interpretation.To accurately image the true structure of subsurface medium,the consensus among geophysicists is to no longer treat subsurface medium as ideal homogeneous medium,but rather to incorporate the viscoacoustic properties of subsurface medium.Based on the generalized screen propagator using conventional acoustic wave equation(acoustic GSP),our developed method introduces viscoacoustic compensation strategy,and derives a one-way wave generalized screen propagator based on time-fractional viscoacoustic wave equation(viscoacoustic GSP).In numerical experiments,we conducted tests on two-dimensional multi-layer model and the Marmousi model.When comparing with the acoustic GSP using the acoustic data,we found that the imaging results of the viscoacoustic GSP using the viscoacoustic data showed a significant attenuation compensation effect,and achieved imaging results for both algorithms were essentially consistent.However,the imaging results of acoustic GSP using viscoacoustic data showed significant attenuation effects,especially for deep subsurface imaging.This indicates that we have proposed an effective method to compensate the attenuated seismic wavefield.Our application on a set of real seismic data demonstrated that the imaging performance of our proposed method in local areas surpassed that of the conventional acoustic GSP.This suggests that our proposed method holds practical value and can more accurately image real subsurface structures while enhancing imaging resolution compared with the conventional acoustic GSP.Finally,with respect to computational efficiency,we gathered statistics on running time to compare our proposed method with conventional Q-RTM,and it is evident that our method exhibits higher computational efficiency.In summary,our proposed viscoacoustic GSP method takes into account the true properties of the medium,still achieves migration results comparable to conventional acoustic GSP.