Traveltime and Reflection Coefficients Accuracy of Staggered-grid Finite-difference Simulation of Seismic Waves

Finite-difference methods are widely used for simulation of wave propagation in heterogeneous media, in particular for a case of discontinuous parameters. Usually, the same numerical scheme is used in the whole computational domain whether there are discontinuities or not. However if medium parameters are not modified in the vicinity of the discontinuities the accuracy of the scheme would be lost. In current work we derive the modified elastic parameters to provide the second-order accuracy of the Virieux scheme on elastic-elastic interface in the sense of reflection-transmission behaviour. We support the theoretical results with numerical experiments.