Superstep wavefield propagation
Abstract
This paper describes how to propagate wavefields for arbitrary numbers of traditional time steps in a single step, called a superstep. We show how to construct operators that accomplish this task for finite-difference time domain schemes, including temporal first-order schemes in isotropic, anisotropic and elastic media, as well as temporal second-order schemes for acoustic media. This task is achieved by implementing a computational tradeoff differing from traditional single step wavefield propagators by precomputing propagator matrices for each model location for k timesteps (a superstep) and using these propagator matrices to advance the wavefield k time steps at once. This tradeoff separates the physics of the propagator matrix computation from the computer science of wavefield propagation and allows each discipline to provide their optimal modular solutions.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2406.05154,
title = {Superstep wavefield propagation},
author = {Tamas Nemeth and Kurt Nihei and Alex Loddoch and Anusha Sekar and Ken Bube and John Washbourne and Luke Decker and Sam Kaplan and Chunling Wu and Andrey Shabelansky and Milad Bader and Ovidiu Cristea and Ziyi Yin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.05154},
year = {2025}
}