Source Estimation by Full Wave Form Inversion

Abstract

Given time-dependent ground motion recordings at a number of receiver stations, we solve the inverse problem for estimating the parameters of the seismic source. The source is modeled as a point moment tensor source, characterized by its location, moment tensor components, the start time, and frequency parameter (rise time) of its source time function. In total, there are 11 unknown parameters. We use a non-linear conjugate gradient algorithm to minimize the full waveform misfit between observed and computed ground motions at the receiver stations. An important underlying assumption of the minimization problem is that the wave propagation is accurately described by the elastic wave equation in a heterogeneous isotropic material. We use a fourth order accurate finite difference method, developed in [12], to evolve the waves forwards in time. The adjoint wave equation corresponding to the discretized elastic wave equation is used to compute the gradient of the misfit, which is needed by the non-linear conjugated minimization algorithm. A new source point moment source discretization is derived that guarantees that the Hessian of the misfit is a continuous function of the source location. An efficient approach for calculating the Hessian is also presented. We show how the Hessian can be used to scale the problem to improve the convergence of the non-linear conjugated gradient algorithm. Numerical experiments are presented for estimating the source parameters from synthetic data in a layer over half-space problem (LOH.1), illustrating rapid convergence of the proposed approach.