Towards a Full Waveform Ambient Noise Inversion

Abstract:

Noise tomography usually works under the assumption that the inter-station ambient noise correlation is equal to a scaled version of the Green’s function between the two receivers. This assumption, however, is only met under specific conditions, for instance, wavefield diffusivity and equipartitioning, zero attenuation, etc., that are typically not satisfied in the Earth. This inconsistency inhibits the exploitation of the full waveform information contained in noise correlations regarding Earth structure and noise generation. To overcome this limitation we attempt to develop a method that consistently accounts for noise distribution, 3D heterogeneous Earth structure and the full seismic wave propagation physics in order to improve the current resolution of tomographic images of the Earth.

As an initial step towards a full waveform ambient noise inversion we develop a preliminary inversion scheme based on a 2D finite-difference code simulating correlation functions and on adjoint techniques. With respect to our final goal, a simultaneous inversion for noise distribution and Earth structure, we address the following two aspects: (1) the capabilities of different misfit functionals to image wave speed anomalies and source distribution and (2) possible source-structure trade-offs, especially to what extent unresolvable structure could be mapped into the inverted noise source distribution and vice versa.