Separating wave-modes of prestack elastic seismograms using pure mode wave propagators in anisotropic media

• DOI: 10.1190/segam2012-0639.1
• Publication Date: 2013-04-15T23:47:27Z
• Authors: Chenlong Wang; Jiubing Cheng; Wei Kang
• Keywords: 01 natural sciences; 0105 earth and related environmental sciences

Summary We present an approach to separate the P- and S-waves in elastic displacement component data recorded at the earth’s surface by using the so-called pure mode wave propagators in anisotropic media. First, we reverse-time extrapolate the common-shot data in a vertically homogeneous computational model with elastic anisotropic wave equation to a reference depth close to the surface. Then we forward propagate these extrapolated wavefields using pseudo-pure mode wave equations to reconstruct the equivalent elastic wavefields within a narrow band near the surface. Finally, we project those wavefields onto the anisotropic polarization direction to extract pure P- or Swaves seismograms at the original recording surface. Synthetic data examples prove the feasibility of this approach.