Binary recovery via phase field regularization for first-arrival traveltime tomography

Abstract

We propose a double obstacle phase field methodology for binary recovery of the slowness function of an Eikonal equation found in first-arrival traveltime tomography. We treat the inverse problem as an optimization problem with quadratic misfit functional added to a phase field relaxation of the perimeter penalization functional. Our approach yields solutions as we account for well posedness of the forward problem by choosing regular priors. We obtain a convergent finite difference and mixed finite element based discretization and a well defined descent scheme by accounting for the non-differentiability of the forward problem. We validate the phase field technique with a Γ—convergence result and numerically by conducting parameter studies for the scheme, and by applying it to a variety of test problems with different geometries, boundary conditions, and source—receiver locations.

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