The Green's function for the diffusion coefficient

Abstract

The scattering diffusion coefficient between two points can theoretically be extracted from a random distribution of sources. An improved ability to measure the diffusion coefficient of the Earth's crust would simplify the process of characterizing the fracture network for applications in geothermal energy. This has the potential to make geothermal wells more economical to make, more efficient to operate, and longer lived. Previous work has shown the diffusion coefficient can be extracted from synthetic datasets in both one dimension and three dimensions using seismic interferometry. This paper attempts to recover the diffusion coefficient for a realistic source distribution taken from a microseismic dataset from a geothermal field in Indonesia. This dataset did not have an ideal distribution of sources, so the estimated diffusion coefficient did not match the expected value. A better estimate of the expected diffusion coefficient and an improved dataset with sources more evenly distributed in all directions around the receivers would likely give a better result.