Elastodynamic Marchenko method: advances and remaining challenges

Marchenko methods aim to remove all overburden-related internal multiples. The acoustic and elastodynamic formulations observe identical equations, but different physics. The elastodynamic case highlights that the Marchenko method only handles overburden-generated reflections, i.e. forward-scattered transmitted waves (and so-called fast multiples) remain in the data. Moreover, to constrain an underdetermined problem, the Marchenko method makes two assumptions that are reasonable for acoustic, but not for elastodynamic waves. Firstly, the scheme requires an initial guess that can be realistically estimated for sufficiently-simple acoustic cases, but remains unpredictable for elastic media without detailed overburden knowledge. Secondly, the scheme assumes temporal separability of upgoing focusing and Green’s functions, which holds for many acoustic media but easily fails in presence of elastic effects. The latter limitation is nearly-identical to the monotonicity requirement of the inverse scattering series, indicating that this limitation may be due to the underlying physics and not algorithm dependent. Provided that monotonicity holds, the aforementioned initial estimate can be retrieved by augmenting the Marchenko method with energy conservation and a minimum-phase condition. However, the augmentation relies on the availability of an elastic minimum-phase reconstruction method, which is currently under investigation. Finally, we discuss a geological setting where an acoustic approximation suffices.