What is it about?
In optics, wave diffraction is viewed as a primary carrier of information. In contrast to that, owing to the apparent differences in data acquisition, in seismology the process has been mostly neglected in the past, despite the fact that diffracted signals contribute the "sharpness" to a seismic image. Existing texts are complete but often very technical, with the result that the obvious beauty and the inherent opportunities of this weak background wavefield are rarely fully appreciated. With this 64-page account my intent was to break with this tradition of technical rigor and provide an intuitive introduction to the topic by starting from first principles in optics.
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Why is it important?
The opportunities of dedicated diffraction imaging and inversion in seismology are still greatly underestimated. I feel, that aside from the overall weakness of the diffracted wavefield and its tendency to strongly interfere with stronger contributions, until the present day there does not exist a thorough yet intuitive and easy-to-grasp introduction to this fascinating topic. Seismic diffraction pervades essentially all seismic recordings gathered over the past 50 years and provides striking and unique opportunities that wait to be discovered and brought to use. With this contribution I want to enable an easy access to this topic to increase awareness and spark new ideas for future initiatives.
Perspectives
I personally have lacked an easy-to-understand introduction to the topic and, as a student, felt often overwhelmed by mathematical complexity and at times unconvincing applications (mostly due to a lack of data quality of insufficient processing). While I hugely admire the pioneering works that predate this text, I hope that I can somewhat close this apparent gap and help scientists not yet familiar with seismic diffraction to dive into the topic and share my fascination with it.
Dr Benjamin Schwarz
Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy Systems IWES
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: An introduction to seismic diffraction, January 2019, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/bs.agph.2019.05.001.
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