A new partial-prestack migration operator to manipulate multicomponent data, called converted-wave azimuth moveout (PS-AMO), transforms converted-wave prestack data with an arbitrary offset and azimuth to equivalent data with a new offset and azimuth position. This operator is a sequential application of converted-wave dip moveout and its inverse. As expected, PS-AMO reduces to the known expression of AMO for the extreme case when the P velocity is the same as the S velocity. Moreover, PS-AMO preserves the resolution of dipping events and internally applies a correction for the lateral shift between the common-midpoint and the common-reflection/conversion point. An implementation of PS-AMO in the log-stretch frequency-wavenumber domain is computationally efficient. The main applications for the PS-AMO operator are geometry regularization, data-reduction through partial stacking, and interpolation of unevenly sampled data. We test our PS-AMO operator by solving 3D acquisition geometry-regularization problems for multicomponent, ocean-bottom seismic data. The geometry-regularization problem is defined as a regularized least-squares-objective function. To preserve the resolution of dipping events, the regularization term uses the PS-AMO operator. Application of this methodology on a portion of the Alba 3D, multicomponent, ocean-bottom seismic data set shows that we can satisfactorily obtain an interpolated data set that honors the physics of converted waves.
Converted-wave azimuth moveout