SEISMIC WAVEFIELD ‘CONTINUATION’ IN THE SINGLE SCATTERING APPROXIMATION:
A FRAMEWORK FOR DIP AND AZIMUTH MOVEOUT

MAARTEN V. DE HOOP, ALISON E. MALCOLM AND JÉRÔME H. LE ROUSSEAU

Abstract. Seismic data are commonly modeled by a high-frequency single scattering approximation. In this paper we use methods from microlocal analysis and the theory of Fourier integral operators to study continuation of the seismic wavefield in this single scattering approximation. This amounts to a linearization in the medium coefficient about a smooth background. The discontinuities are contained in the medium perturbation. We use the smooth background to derive the continuation as the composition of imaging, modeling and restriction operators.