Acoustic VTI Modeling Using an Optimal Time-Space Domain Finite-Difference Scheme

Finite-difference (FD) schemes have been used widely for solving wave equations in seismic exploration. However, the conventional FD schemes hardly guarantee high accuracy at both small and large wavenumbers. In this paper, we propose an optimal time-space domain FD scheme for acoustic vertical transversely isotropic (VTI) wave modeling. The optimal FD coefficients for the second-order spatial derivatives are derived by approaching the time-space domain dispersion relation of acoustic VTI wave equations with the combination of the Taylor-series expansion and the sampling interpolation. We perform numerical dispersion analyses and acoustic VTI modeling using the optimal time-space domain FD scheme. The numerical dispersion analyses show that the optimal FD scheme has smaller dispersion than the conventional FD scheme at large wavenumbers, and also preserves high accuracy at small wavenumbers. The acoustic VTI modeling examples also demonstrate that the optimal time-space domain FD scheme has greater accuracy compared with the conventional time-space domain FD scheme for the same modeling parameters.