General representations for wavefield modeling and inversion in geophysics

Acoustic, electromagnetic, elastodynamic, poroelastic, and electroseismic waves are all governed by a unified matrix-vector wave equation. The matrices in this equation obey the same symmetry properties for each of these wave phenomena. This implies that the wave vectors for each of these phenomena obey the same reciprocity theorems. By substituting Green’s matrices in these reciprocity theorems, unified wavefield representations are obtained. Analogous to the well-known acoustic wavefield representations, these unified representations find applications in geophysical modeling, migration, inversion, multiple elimination, and interferometry.