An Iterative Factored Eikonal Solver for TTI Media

Developing an accurate and efficient eikonal solver for heterogeneous tilted transversely isotropic (TTI) media is quite important for modeling, traveltime tomography or beam migration. We propose to solve the complex TTI eikonal equation through an iterative method based on the simpler elliptical anisotropic eikonal equation with a source term injecting the necessary perturbation for handling the specific TTI high-power terms. Moreover, we mitigate initial errors in describing the physical source by using a factorization method removing the point source upwind singularity. Different numerical examples on TTI models show that this strategy incorporating the iterative fixed-point procedure and the factorization method yields accurate solutions for long offsets.

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