Topography-dependent eikonal tomography based on the fast sweeping scheme and the adjoint-state technique

First-arrival traveltime tomography has been widely used for upper crustal velocity modeling, but it usually suffers from the problem of complex surface topography. To overcome this problem, we present a new topography-dependent eikonal tomography scheme that combines a developed accurate and efficient traveltime modeling method and introduces a flexible and robust adjoint inversion scheme in the presence of irregular topography. A surface-flattening scheme is used to handle the irregular surface, where the real model is discretized by curvilinear grids and the irregular free surface is mathematically flattened through the transformation from Cartesian to curvilinear coordinates. Based on this parameterization, the forward traveltime modeling is conducted by a monotone fast sweeping method that discretizes the factored topography-dependent eikonal equation with a point-source condition. This algorithm can circumvent the source singularity problem and decreases the numerical error in the vicinity of a point-source in the curvilinear system. Then, the gradient-based inversion is used to minimize the misfit function, which is achieved by a matrix-free adjoint-state method without cumbersome ray-tracing and explicit estimation of Fréchet derivative matrix in the curvilinear coordinate system. The new tomographic scheme is evaluated through numerical examples with different seismic structures with complex topography, and then applied to a wide-angle profile acquired in the Northeastern Tibetan Plateau. The results validate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed tomography scheme in constructing shallow crustal velocity models with irregular topography. © 2022 Society of Exploration Geophysicists.