Full Seismic Waveform Modelling and Inversion
Recent progress in numerical methods and computer science allows us today to simulate the propagation of seismic waves through realistically heterogeneous Earth models with unprecedented accuracy. Full waveform tomography is a tomographic technique that t
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Andreas Fichtner
Full Seismic Waveform Modelling and Inversion
With contributions by Florian Bleibinhaus and Yann Capdeville
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Andreas Fichtner Utrecht University Department of Earth Sciences Budapestlaan 4 3584 CE Utrecht The Netherlands [email protected]
Advances in Geophysical and Environmental Mechanics and Mathematics ISSN 1866-8348 e-ISSN 1866-8356 ISBN 978-3-642-15806-3 e-ISBN 978-3-642-15807-0 DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-15807-0 Springer Heidelberg Dordrecht London New York c Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilm or in any other way, and storage in data banks. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the German Copyright Law of September 9, 1965, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Violations are liable to prosecution under the German Copyright Law. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Cover design: deblik, Berlin Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
To my family and Carolin
Foreword
Our planet is permanently vibrating, excited by oceans, atmosphere, earthquakes, or man-made sources. Luckily, Earth’s physical properties are such that these vibrations – elastic waves to be more specific – often propagate to large distances carrying information on the medium they encounter along the way. The problem of making an educated guess at the subsurface structure from observations of ground motions is as old as instrumental seismology itself (so not that old, maybe a century or so). Let us call the problem seismic tomography akin to CT scanning in medicine, a field seismologists have always envied. Because of limitations in illuminating the Earth with sufficient coverage we have never obtained the sharp and detailed internal structures so familiar from medical imaging. Up to now we have mostly cut corners in the way we model and fit our seismic data. We typically reduce long, wiggly seismograms to a few bytes of information (e.g. travel times, phase velocities) and try to explain these data with approximate theories. This has been for a good reason. Our computers were simply not fast and big enough to allow the calculation of complete wave fields through 3D Earth structures. Frequently the data just do not warrant the use of sophisticated physics. The situation regarding computational power in connection with 3D wave propagation has dramatically changed in the past few years. Even on a global scale the calculation of wave fields across the complete observed frequency range is in sigh
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