Modeling multiple ray histories in layered media using ray field maps

Seismic ray tracing in layered media becomes complicated and demanding when modeling for multiple ray histories and/or dense acquisition geometries. However, we observe some redundancies in current algo-
rithms: (a) the same layers are crossed repeatedly by similar ray segments, and (b) the effort of tracing through a layer is determined by variations in the incoming wavefront rather than the medium. We deal with these redundancies by separating the modeling process in two stages: (stage 1) compute ray field maps representing all ray segments between each pair
of adjacent interfaces, then (stage 2) for each desired ray history assemble the complete ray field from ray segments by iterative lookup in the ray
eld maps.