Anisotropic elastic finite-difference modeling of sources and receivers on Lebedev grids

ABSTRACT The Lebedev grid finite-difference (FD) method allows modeling of anisotropic elastic-wave propagation. On Lebedev grids, erroneous point-source excitations can create spurious (nonphysical) waves. The only known remedy for such artifacts in the literature is the Lisitsa-Vishnevsky method. This method uses a distributed array to create point sources and point receivers on the FD grid. However, the Lisitsa-Vishnevsky method does not fully eliminate spurious artifacts. A novel approach is found in the FD-consistent point source, which suppresses spurious artifacts entirely. The method requires no array recording to create point receivers. The advantage of this method over the Lisitsa-Vishnevsky method is determined with two anisotropic modeling examples.