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## A least-squares formalism

Consider a point in the subsurface. I define the reflectivity matrix at the point by the following relation between the incident displacement vector field due to a source at , and the reflected displacement vector field due to a receiver at the position :

 (1)

where all quantities are evaluated locally at the point .The reflectivity matrix is of order (3x3) and, in general, is a scattering matrix which relates to and contains refractions, diffractions and reflections. However, by anticipating that will be simulated as a direct primary incident field, and will be reconstructed from refraction-muted surface observations as a single-conversion primary reflected field, the interpretation of as a generalized reflectivity matrix is justified.

Now consider the local plane-wave unit polarization vectors , where is the local P-wave propagation direction, the S1 direction, and the S2 direction. The displacement vectors can be expressed in this same ray-centered coordinate system without loss of generality:

where u1 is the P-wave displacement amplitude, u2 is the S1 displacement amplitude, and u3 is the S2 displacement amplitude. In this local ray-coordinate frame, the elements of are associated with generalized non-specular elastic reflection coefficients:

 (2)

The generalized non-specular reflection coefficients are related to the plane-wave specular Zoeppritz coefficients as discussed by Frazer and Sen (1985), and will be examined in more detail later in this paper. It is apparent that the generalized reflection coefficients within can be isolated'' by the appropriate vector dot products. For example, the coefficient can be isolated as

 (3)

where is the local P-wave polarization vector of the incident displacement vector , evaluated at the subsurface point , and is the local P-wave polarization vector of the reflected displacement vector , evaluated at the subsurface point . Please refer to Figure to see the appropriate polarization vector geometry. Similar dot product relations can be stated for the other reflection coefficients of using the appropriate vector directions .For example, the coefficient can be isolated as

 (4)

I will define the reflected scalar function on the left of (4) as and the incident scalar function on the right of (4) as :

and
 (5)

geometry
Figure 1
The elastic polarization vector geometry. The source position is at , the receiver position is at and the subsurface reflection point is at . The polarization vectors are the local P, S1 and S2 plane-wave directions, and functions of . The polarization vectors for S2 waves point out of the plane of this page.

If I can forward model numerous source wavefields and I have numerous reconstructions of the reflected wavefield from multiple surface shot gather observations, then (5) (and all of its nine converted-wave counterparts) can be rearranged into an optimization problem to estimate the isolated reflection coefficient, hereafter called . The objective function J for this problem has the general lp form

 (6)

where Wd and Wm are arbitrary weighting functions in data and model space respectively. The weighting functions in this form are nonconvolutional, and therefore correspond to diagonal covariance functions in the usual least-squares theory sense. Note that adding the second term to (6) will add stability to the final least-squares solution, and will ensure that will be a minimum energy model in the lp sense, which is appropriate for a desired spiky reflectivity solution. Choosing the l2 norm and integrating over the implicit functional dependencies, one obtains:

 (7)

To extremize J and thus find an optimal'' solution for , I perform the following stationary point analysis. Perturb J by an arbitrary small amount :

 (8)

A stationary point of J with respect to occurs when

Neglecting terms of order ,

 (9)

Since is arbitrary, then the integrand kernel must vanish at the stationary point. This results in a least-squares reflectivity solution:

 (10)

Equation (10) is a weighted zero-lag correlation of the incident and reflected wavefield scalar products, normalized by the weighted minimum-threshold energy of the incident wavefield scalar product. Equation (10) is valid for all of the generalized elastic reflection coefficients of (2) by simply making the appropriate redefinitions of and as in (5).

Next: The Kirchhoff elastodynamic integral Up: THEORY Previous: THEORY
Stanford Exploration Project
11/17/1997