Undergraduate Mathematical Sciences Seminar
Thursday, February 12, 2009, 12:30 -- 1:50pm
Mathematics in Seismic Imaging
Ken Bube, UW Department of Mathematics
Abstract: Seismic imaging uses the measured seismic responses to either earthquakes or artificially induced vibrations to estimate an image of some material properties (for example, wave speed as a function of position) of the subsurface. Mathematics is used at every stage of the process, including deriving the physical models, studying properties of solutions of wave equations, solving wave propagation properties numericallly, and setting up and solving an optimization problem to solve for the material parameters.
We will consider seismic traveltime tomography as an example, and discuss the use of differential equations and linear algebra in the numerical solution of traveltime tomography.