A parallel fast sweeping algorithm for fast and accurate traveltime computation in anisotropic media

Numerical solution of the eikonal equation has been widely used to compute traveltimes in anisotropic media. Several techniques have been recently proposed to increase the accuracy of these solutions. These include factoring the unknown traveltime to tackle the source-singularity problem, using the Weighted Essentially Non-oscillatory (WENO) approximation of the traveltime derivatives, and the Discontinuous Galerkin method. Although these approaches yield highly accurate traveltimes but they also result in increased computational load. Therefore, I propose a parallel fast sweeping algorithm to compute fast and accurate solution of the anisotropic eikonal equation. High accuracy is achieved by using factorization followed by the WENO approximation of derivatives, whereas computational speed up is obtained by sweeping the computational domain in parallel. With a large number of CPUs, significant reduction in computational cost can be achieved for large 3D models.