3D Least-Squares Migration of Teleseismic Receiver Functions and Its Application

Pengfei Zuo, & Yunfeng Chen

Submitted September 7, 2025, SCEC Contribution #14905, 2025 SCEC Annual Meeting Poster #TBD

The development of dense seismic arrays offers new opportunities to develop advanced array imaging techniques for improving subsurface characterization. We present a high-resolution receiver function imaging method implemented through a three-dimensional, wave-equation-based least-squares migration (LSM) framework, specifically optimized for teleseismic wavefields recorded by dense nodal arrays. The split‑step Fourier algorithm is employed to solve the acoustic wave equation, thereby constructing the forward (de-migration) and adjoint (migration) operators for wavefield extrapolation. The key concept of the proposed migration technique is to formulate the migration process as a regularized least‑squares optimization problem, which allows us to readily incorporate the velocity model vector as a priori information to suppress strong acquisition footprints and compensate for inadequate illumination. We validate the proposed method using synthetic experiments with various velocity models. The LSM method accurately recovers the 3D geometry of subsurface structures at improved vertical resolution compared to the conventional migration approach. In practical applications, we implement our approach on recordings from a dense nodal array deployed across the Qaidam Basin, located on the northeastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau. The 3D algorithm is adaptive to arbitrary array geometry and enables incorporating earthquakes from any propagation direction. Its flexibility, computational efficiency, and, most importantly, the superior performance in improving imaging quality make the proposed method a promising tool for high‑resolution imaging of complex subsurface structures.

Citation
Zuo, P., & Chen, Y. (2025, 09). 3D Least-Squares Migration of Teleseismic Receiver Functions and Its Application. Poster Presentation at 2025 SCEC Annual Meeting.

Related Projects & Working Groups
Seismology