Travel-time sensitivity kernels in ocean acoustic tomography

Wave-theoretic ocean acoustic propagation modeling is combined with the peak arrival approach for tomographic travel-time observables to derive the sensitivity kernel of travel times with respect to sound-speed variations. This is the Born–Fréchet kernel relating the three-dimensional spatial distribution of sound-speed variations with the induced travel-time variations. The derivation is based on the first Born approximation of the Green’s function. The application of the travel-time sensitivity kernel to an ocean acoustic waveguide gives a picture close to the ray-theoretic one in the case of high frequencies. However, in the low-frequency case, of interest in ocean acoustic tomography, for example, there are significant deviations. Low-frequency travel times are sensitive to sound-speed changes in Fresnel-zone-scale areas surrounding the eigenrays, but not on the eigenrays themselves, where the sensitivity is zero. Further, there are areas of positive sensitivity, where, e.g., a sound-speed increase results in an increase of arrival times, i.e., a further delay of arrivals, in contrast with the common expectation. These findings are confirmed by forward acoustic predictions from a coupled-mode code.