Theoretical investigation of the excitation of leaky modes for multilayered models

SUMMARY The dispersion analysis with array-based methods enables us to detect and analyse the multimode dispersive waves with weak amplitudes. Over the past years, there has been widespread extraction of higher normal modes from earthquake records and ambient noise, which have been extensively employed in near-surface and crustal investigations. Notably, the frequent reporting of leaky modes in recent observations has gained significant attention. This is because leaky modes can provide more constraints on subsurface structures. Particularly, a subset of leaky modes is found to be sensitive to P-wave velocities, which has the potential to compensate for the limitations of traditional surface wave inversion. Nevertheless, due to the lack of knowledge of the excitation and practical application of leaky modes, it is urgent to have an effective guide in selecting certain leaky modes for practical inversion combined with other imaging methods. To this end, the theoretical investigation into the excitation of leaky modes for multilayered models is undertaken. By computing theoretical seismograms for various source mechanisms and source depths with the discrete wavenumber and the normal-mode summation methods, respectively, the qualitative evaluation of the leaky-mode contributions to the synthesized seismograms is conducted. Additionally, the impact of the source depth for the same source mechanism is meticulously examined by the dispersion spectra. Furthermore, with the accurate computation of leaky modes, we categorize the leaky modes into PL and OP (organ-pipe) modes according to their distinctive properties, that is, their attenuation and eigen-displacements, which may be used to explain very well the occurrence of certain leaky modes on the dispersion spectrum and be indicative of the reasonable choice of PL modes to put them into practical inversion for P-velocity structures.