Snapshot wavefield decomposition for heterogeneous velocity media

We propose a novel directional decomposition operator for wavefield snapshots in heterogeneous-velocity media. The proposed operator demonstrates the link between the amplitude of pressure and particlevelocity plane waves in the wavenumber domain. The proposed operator requires two spatial Fourier transforms (one forward and one backward) per spatial dimension and time slice. To illustrate the operator we demonstrate its applicability to heterogeneous velocity models using a simple velocity-box model and a more heterogeneous velocity model, based on real data, from close to the Annerveen gas field, The Netherlands.