Notes on waves in layered media to accompany program Rmatrix

C. J. Thomson
Department of Geological Sciences, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6

Copyright © 1996 by C. J. Thomson, Queen's University

1. Introduction

These notes describe the theory behind program Rmatrix, which computes the reflection and transmission properties of a stack of plane, homogeneous, generally-anisotropic layers. Rmatrix returns the reflection/transmission ``matrices'' for the stack, a concept due to B. L. N. Kennett and explored thoroughly for the isotropic case in the book by Kennett (1983). These matrices can be used to form synthetic seismograms for body or surface waves, perhaps those excited by sources buried in the layering. Although these notes do reach the point-source solution for the anisotropic layers, many properties of the solution are not discussed. Some aspects will be quite analogous to the isotropic case (for which Kennett 1983 is recommended) and those new effects due to the anisotropy largely remain to be investigated, which is why Rmatrix was written.

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In: Seismic Waves in Complex 3-D Structures, Report 7, pp. 147-162, Dep. Geophys., Charles Univ., Prague, 1998.
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