Cancellation of spurious arrivals in Green's function retrieval of multiple scattered waves

The Green's function for wave propagation can be extracted by cross-correlating field fluctuations excited on a closed surface that surrounds the employed receivers. This study treats an acoustic multiple scattering medium with discrete scatterers and shows that for a given source the cross-correlation of waves propagating along most combinations of scattering paths gives unphysical arrivals. Because theory predicts that the true Green's function is retrieved, such unphysical arrivals must cancel after integration over all sources. This cancellation occurs because the scattering amplitude of each scatterer satisfies the generalized optical theorem. The cross-correlation of scattered waves with themselves does not lead to the correct retrieval of scattered waves, because the cross-terms between the direct and scattered waves is essential.