The stabilized self-starter

A stability problem is eliminated from the self-starter, which is a parabolic equation technique for generating initial conditions. The stability problem is associated with evanescent modes that correspond to nearly vertical propagation. It causes the solution to break down at certain frequencies for problems involving relatively low attenuation. The error is restricted to relatively short ranges unless the medium is strongly range dependent near the source. The stability problem is eliminated by placing the pole of the smoothing operator in the self-starter away from the eigenvalues of the depth operator.