The 4×4 ray propagator matrices in ray-centered coordinates offer a large number of important applications, both in numerical modeling of seismic wave fields in isotropic and anisotropic inhomogeneous layered structures by asymptotic high-frequency methods, and in practical interpretational problems of seismic exploration. They have been traditionally calculated by dynamic ray tracing in ray-centered coordinates. The dynamic ray tracing in ray-centered coordinates, however, is not so simple and numerically efficient as the dynamic ray tracing in Cartesian coordinates. A simplified construction of 4×4 ray propagator matrix in ray-centered coordinates is proposed. It avoids the dynamic ray tracing in ray-centered coordinates, and relies fully upon the dynamic ray tracing in Cartesian coordinates. This increases considerably the numerical efficiency of its computation, and also its flexibility and transparency of results. Two approaches are proposed here. The first approach simply transforms the 6×6 ray propagator matrix in Cartesian coordinates to 4×4 ray propagator matrix in ray-centered coordinates at the initial and end points of the ray (or at any point of the ray where we need to know it). In the second approach, four solutions of the dynamic ray tracing in Cartesian coordinates, with strictly specified initial conditions, are exploited.
Dynamic ray tracing, ray propagator matrices, seismic anisotropy, inhomogeneity, structural interfaces.
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