Comparison of the anisotropic-common-ray approximation of the coupling ray theory for S waves with the Fourier pseudo-spectral method in weakly anisotropic models

Petr Bulant, Ivan Psencik, Veronique Farra and Ekkehart Tessmer

Summary

The standard anisotropic ray theory does not work properly or even fails when applied to S-wave propagation in inhomogeneous weakly anisotropic media or in the vicinity of shear-wave singularities, where the two shear waves propagate with similar phase velocities. The coupling ray theory was proposed to avoid this problem. In it, amplitudes of the two S waves are computed by solving two coupled, frequency-dependent differential equations along a common S-wave reference ray. In this paper, we test two recently developed algorithms of the coupling ray theory. As a reference, we use the Fourier pseudo-spectral method, which does not suffer from limitations of the ray methods and yields very accurate results. We study the behaviour of shear waves in weakly anisotropic media as well as in the vicinity of intersection singularity or conical singularity. By comparing the coupling ray theory results with the results of the Fourier pseudo-spectral method, we illustrate clearly applicability of the coupling ray theory in the mentioned situations.

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In: Seismic Waves in Complex 3-D Structures, Report 21, pp. 167-183, Dep. Geophys., Charles Univ., Prague, 2011.