Subsalt Imaging of Wave Converted Reflections in Physical Model Data

At the boundaries between saltbodies and the sediments, large contrasts in P-wave velocity occur and therefore quite a large amount of energy is converted into S-waves. These S-waves show up in the seismic data as echoes of the P-wave reflections. With the aid of physical model data, these effects can be studied in a controlled manner. Experiments on a physical model dataset illustrate clearly that wave conversions appear at saltbody interfaces and that migration of this data for a known "subsurface model" with the correct subsurface velocities (either P or S) will provide the correct images of (multiply) mode-converted energy.