A slowness approach to the reflectivity method of seismogram synthesis

Of the many schemes available for computing synthetic seismograms, the reflectivity method is probably the most widely used because of its ability to provide complete solutions. The method does, however, suffer the disadvantage that intermediate results are quite difficult to interpret. A new reflectivity technique, here called reflectivity-slowness, results if the original method is reformulated using a slowness rather than a spectral approach. The new procedure bears a strong similarity to the WKBJ method, but retains the ability to give complete solutions. The reflectivity-slowness and WKBJ methods share the property that intermediate results are readily interpreted; this feature may eventually be exploited in the solution of the inverse problem.