Extending the search space of time-domain adjoint-state FWI with randomized implicit time shifts

Adjoint-state full-waveform inversion aims to obtain subsurface properties such as velocity, density or anisotropy parameters, from surface recorded data. As with any (non-stochastic) gradient based optimization procedure, the solution of this inversion procedure is to a large extend determined by the quality of the starting model. If this starting model is too far from the true model, these derivative-based optimizations will likely end up in local minima and erroneous inversion results. In certain cases, extension of the search space, e.g. by making the wavefields or focused matched sources additional unknowns, has removed some of these non-uniqueness issues but these rely on time-harmonic formulations. Here, we follow a different approach by combining an implicit extension of the velocity model, time compression techniques and recent results on stochastic sampling in non-smooth/non-convex optimization

https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Conferences/EAGE/2017/loubou...