Multiple-order derivatives of a waveguide acoustic field with respect to sound speed, density, and frequency

An adjoint perturbative method is used to derive expressions for the first- through third-order derivatives of a pressure field with respect to sound speed, density, and frequency, for the restricted case of a laterally homogenous waveguide in which environmental parameters are only a function of depth. By using a normal-mode Green's function, the three-dimensional spatial correlation required by the standard acoustic adjoint equation can be reduced to a set of one-dimensional depth integrals. The resulting expressions for the first-order derivative are similar to those obtained by previous perturbative approaches based on the depth-separated wave equation, but the approach followed here permits straightforward extension to higher-order derivatives. Explicit evaluations of the expressions for a representative shallow-water waveguide model are in excellent agreement with numerical finite-difference computations. An analysis of the expressions as a function of source-receiver range finds the contributions to the mode amplitude derivatives to be non-negligible at ranges less than a few modal interference lengths, for parameters associated with the ocean bottom. Therefore, linear perturbative inversion methods that perturb only horizontal wavenumbers and not mode amplitudes should either be used with caution or modified to incorporate the expressions presented here.