Application of Seismic Interferometry to Natural Earthquake Records

Recently, seismic interferometry has been one of the hottest topics in the exploration geophysics since this can be applied to reflection seismology. Seismic interferometry constructs Green's functions between arbitrary two points by taking cross-correlation of records observed at two locations. These Green's functions correspond to the wavefields as if an impulsive source was set at one location and seismic wave propagates from this source to the other receiver. Therefore, if we chose two surface receivers, we can reconstruct reflection seismic data. In case of using many receivers in a survey line, taking cross-correlation of all observed data at receivers generates pseudo shot-gather data for arbitrary locations. This technique does not need information of time 0 as long as all receivers measure wavefields synchronously. Therefore, there is no limitation with regard to the cause of the seismic vibrations. Natural earthquakes may be very good seismic sources for seismic interferometry. In our study, we adopt data provided by Hi-net system for applications of seismic interferometry. In 1995, 'The Great Hanshin Earthquake' struck around Osaka and Kobe in Japan. After that, Japanese Government decided to construct high-density and high-sensitivity sensor network all over Japan in order to accumulate effective information of earthquakes and understand the mechanism of earthquakes. This seismic network is called 'Hi- net system' in Japan. Hi-net system provides us much effective information, origin time, epicenter, depth, magnitude and waveform, etc... We used waveforms provided by Hi-net and generated pseudo shot-gather data by using seismic interferometry. Then, we applied these data to conventional reflection survey and analyzed underground structures in Japan.