Open AccessTesting the reliability of V p /V s anomalies in traveltime tomography
Author(s) -
Michelini Alberto
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
geophysical journal international
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.302
H-Index - 168
eISSN - 1365-246X
pISSN - 0956-540X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-246x.1993.tb03928.x
Subject(s) - a priori and a posteriori , tomography , robustness (evolution) , geology , data set , seismology , algorithm , mathematics , physics , statistics , optics , chemistry , philosophy , biochemistry , epistemology , gene
SUMMARY In traveltime tomography, V p /V s models calculated as ratio between the resolved P and S models are affected by the different ray coverages and phase‐onset reading accuracies of P and S waves. the result of this is that the computed V p /V s models can display large fluctuations which are unrelated to the true structure. Introduction of some P‐S coupling (e.g. proportionality, correlation) as a priori data permits us to stabilize the resulting V p /V s model about a preselected average value and to minimize the insurgence of fictitious V p /V s anomalies. In general, addition of P‐S coupling trades off with data misfit and adoption of this technique is suggested for robustness tests of resolved V p /V s features. the technique is applied to a synthetic data set generated using an idealized fault structure and the source‐receiver geometry existing at Parkfield, California.