Kirchhoff operators represent a class of linear transformations based on integral solutions to the wave equation. The implementation of integrals as discrete summation reduces to a matrix-vector multiplication where we hardly ever write down the matrices. The linear operation transforms a space to another space (e.g., a data space to a model space ). These spaces are simply represented by vectors whose components are packed with numbers. The relation between data and model is then given by the linear system of equations:
(39) |