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Adverse Effects of an Edge Diffractor in Seismic Reflection Interferometry

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Abstract

To understand steeply dipping events in seismic reflection interferometry (SRI), we derived an expression that describes the difference in travel time (Δτ) from a diffractor to two receivers in two dimensions. For a fixed receiver interval, the expression shows that Δτ is zero when the diffractor is at the midpoint of the paired receivers, increases with an apparent velocity of half the medium velocity as the diffractor moves toward either receiver, and remains constant for a diffractor located on the same side of both receivers. The horizontal portion of Δτ is slightly skewed during the normal moveout correction, yielding a maximum peak of the horizontally stacked trace at a slightly smaller time than Δτ. Accordingly, the diffracted waves have an apparent velocity slightly higher than half of the medium velocity in a horizontally stacked image. This conformed to virtual data for an elastic two-layer model with a vertical boundary. We then generalized the expression to three dimensions, in which listric travel time curves were predicted for an oblique edge diffractor, a vertex diffractor offline from the receiver pair, or a buried diffractor. Based on both two- and three-dimensional analyses of the edge diffractor, we tentatively interpreted the linear and listric dipping events observed in the passive SRI image across the Korean Peninsula to have been caused by diffractors near the intersection of the profile and geologic boundaries.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Human Resources Development of the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP) Grant funded by the Korea government Ministry of Knowledge Economy (No. 20194010201920), the Korea Meteorological Administration Research and Development Program under Grant KRIMPA 2015-7010, and the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (No. 2019R1A6A1A03033167). One of the authors, Youngseok Song, was supported by an NRF (National Research Foundation of Korea) Grant funded by the government of Korea (NRF-2017H1A2A1044244-Global Ph. D. Fellowship Program). We thank Dr. Soon Jee Seol for her helpful suggestions during the execution of this work.

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Correspondence to Ki Young Kim.

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Song, Y., Kim, K.Y., Byun, J. et al. Adverse Effects of an Edge Diffractor in Seismic Reflection Interferometry. Pure Appl. Geophys. 177, 4719–4731 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-020-02531-y

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