Stability analysis for acoustic wave propagation in tilted TI media by finite differences

Several papers in recent years have reported instabilities in P-wave modelling, based on an acoustic approximation, for inhomogeneous transversely isotropic media with tilted symmetry axis (TTI media). In particular, instabilities tend to occur if the axis of symmetry varies rapidly in combination with strong contrasts of medium parameters, which is typically the case at the foot of a steeply dipping salt flank. In a recent paper, we have proposed and demonstrated a P-wave modelling approach for TTI media, based on rotated stress and strain tensors, in which the wave equations reduce to a coupled set of two second-order partial differential equations for two scalar stress components: a normal component along the variable axis of symmetry and a lateral component of stress in the plane perpendicular to that axis. Spatially constant density is assumed in this approach. A numerical discretization scheme was proposed which uses discrete second-derivative operators for the non-mixed second-order derivatives in the wave equations, and combined first-derivative operators for the mixed second-order derivatives.This paper provides a complete and rigorous stability analysis, assuming a uniformly sampled grid. Although the spatial discretization operator for the TTI acoustic wave equation is not self-adjoint, this operator still defines a complete basis of eigenfunctions of the solution space, provided that the solution space is somewhat restricted at locations where the medium is elliptically anisotropic. First, a stability analysis is given for a discretization scheme, which is purely based on first-derivative operators. It is shown that the coefficients of the central difference operators should satisfy certain conditions. In view of numerical artefacts, such a discretization scheme is not attractive, and the non-mixed second-order derivatives of the wave equation are discretized directly by second-derivative operators. It is shown that this modification preserves stability, provided that the central difference operators of the second-order derivatives dominate over the twice applied operators of the first-order derivatives. In practice, it turns out that this is almost the case. Stability of the desired discretization scheme is enforced by slightly weighting down the mixed second-order derivatives in the wave equation. This has a minor, practically negligible, effect on the kinematics of wave propagation. Finally, it is shown that non-reflecting boundary conditions, enforced by applying a taper at the boundaries of the grid, do not harm the stability of the discretization scheme.