Patent Document ID: 5508914
Application ID: 08314240
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. In a stacked gather of raw seismic traces created from interaction between a plurality of cooperating seismic sources and receivers located sequentially at predetermined stations, said raw seismic traces being perturbed by surface-consistent static time shifts, a process for maximizing the inter-trace reflection coherency, said reflection coherency being proportional to a modified stack power, comprising: modeling said sources and receivers as a dynamical system of one dimensional interacting particles having coordinates proportional to said static time shifts, said particles being assigned a fictitious mass, said system having an interaction potential proportional to the modified stack power of said gather; iteratively altering the coordinates of said particles in the direction of an applied force proportional the negative gradient of said interaction potential with a predetermined annealing schedule until said system reaches an equilibrium ground state where said applied force substantially vanishes and said modified stack power becomes maximal; accepting as final, the coordinates of said particles existing at said ground state; and applying the final coordinates to said raw seismic trace gather as static corrections to convert said raw seismic traces to a display of coherent seismic traces.