Prediction of internal multiples

Abstract We present an asymptotic derivation of results due to Weglein et al. on the prediction of internal multiples in seismic reflection data. Our proof starts from a third-order term in the Lipmann–Schwinger–Dyson forward scattering series, which is easily interpreted as an internal multiple. In essence, we substitute the scattering potentials occurring in this term by common shot migrated data and employ stationary phase analysis to write the resulting formula in several equivalent forms, one of which is Weglein’s result. On the way, we will demonstrate that the kinematics of the prediction formulas is independent of the earth model.