• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.8-18
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• 1998

In exploration seismology, the Kirchhoff hyperbola has been successfully used to migrate reflection seismo-grams. The mathematical basis of Kirchhoff hyperbola has not been clearly defined and understood for the application of prestack or poststack migration. The travel time from the scatterer in the subsurface to the receivers (exploding reflector model) on the surface can be a kinematic approximation of Green's function when the source is excited at position of the scatterer. If we add the travel time from the source to the scatterer in the subsurface to the travel time of exploding reflector model, we can view this travel time as a kinematic approximation of the partial derivative wavefield with respect to the velocity or the density in the subsurface. The summation of reflection seismogram along the Kirchhoff hyperbola can be evaluated as an inner product between the partial derivative wavefield and the field reflection seismogram. In addition to this kinematic interpretation of Kirchhoff hyperbola, when we extend this concept to shallow refraction seismic data, the stacking of refraction data along the straight line can be interpreted as a measurement of an inner product between the first arrival waveform of the partial derivative wavefield and the field refraction data. We evaluated the Kirchhoff hyperbola and the straight line for stacking the refraction data in terms of the first arrival waveform of the partial derivative wavefield with respect to the velocity or the density in the subsurface. This evaluation provides a firm and solid basis for the conventional Kirchhoff migration and the straight line stacking of the refraction data.