Variational Principle for Rayleigh Wave Ellipticity

Toshiro Tanimoto

Published 2009, SCEC Contribution #1289

Rayleigh wave ellipticity is controlled by local structure near a seismic station and has been a unique source of information for shallow S-wave velocity structure. Its high sensitivity to shallow depth provides complementary information to phase and group velocity data whose sensitivity extends to deeper region. The inversion of this parameter has often been conducted by using numerically derived depth sensitivity kernels. We present compact formulas based on a variational principle which includes both volumetric seismic velocity perturbations and boundary perturbations. Use of this formula can speed up the inversion process considerably.

Citation
Tanimoto, T. (2009). Variational Principle for Rayleigh Wave Ellipticity. Geophysical Journal International, 179, 1658-1668. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-246X.2009.04360.x.