A fast converging and anti-aliasing algorithm for Green's functions in terms of spherical or cylindrical harmonics

Abstract

Geophysical observables are generally related to earth structure and source parameters in a complicated non-linear way. Consequently, a large number of forward modelling processes are commonly necessary to obtain a satisfactory estimate of such parameters from observed data. The most time-consuming part of the forward modelling is the computation of the Green's functions of the different earth models to be tested. In this study, we present a fast converging algorithm: the differential transform method for the computation of Green's functions in terms of spherical or cylindrical harmonics. In this method, a deconvolutable high-pass filter is used to enhance the numerical significance of the far-field spectrum of Green's functions. Compared with existing fast converging algorithms such as the Kummer's transformation and the disc factor method, the differential transform method is more efficient except for the extremely near-source region. The new method can be used to suppress numerical phases (non-physical seismic signals) associated with the aliasing effect that may arise in synthetic seismograms when the latter are computed from a windowed wavenumber (or slowness) spectrum. The numerical efficiency of the new method is demonstrated via two representative tests. © 2007 The Authors Journal compilation © 2007 RAS.