One-step downward continuation of potential fields in a wavenumber domain

Based on the iteration method for downward continuation of potential fields, we derive an equivalent one-step downward continuation wavenumber domain operator. We analyse the influence of numerical computation errors on the operator and provide an effective way to depress them. The one-step downward continuation method is tested on both model and real data. The results show that it yields the same effective outcome as the iteration method, with a much higher computation speed comparable to the traditional fast Fourier transform continuation method.