Computational Seismology
Numerical derivatives based on the Fourier Transform

This notebook is part of the supplementary material to Computational Seismology: A Practical Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2016.

Basic Equations¶

The derivative of function $f(x)$ with respect to the spatial coordinate $x$ is calculated using the differentiation theorem of the Fourier transform:

$$\frac{d}{dx} f(x) = \frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi}} \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} ik F(k) e^{ikx} dk$$

In general, this formulation can be extended to compute the n−th derivative of $f(x)$ by considering that $F^{(n)}(k) = D(k)^{n}F(k) = (ik)^{n}F(k)$. Next, the inverse Fourier transform is taken to return to physical space.

$$f^{(n)}(x) = \mathscr{F}^{-1}[(ik)^{n}F(k)] = \frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi}} \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} (ik)^{n} F(k) e^{ikx} dk$$
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# Import all necessary libraries, this is a configuration step for the exercise.
# Please run it before the simulation code!
import numpy as np
import matplotlib
# Show Plot in The Notebook
matplotlib.use("nbagg")
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt


Exercise 1¶

Define a python function call "fourier_derivative(f, dx)" that compute the first derivative of a function $f$ using the Fourier transform properties.

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#################################################################
# IMPLEMENT THE FOURIER DERIVATIVE METHOD HERE!
#################################################################

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Exercise 2¶

Calculate the numerical derivative based on the Fourier transform to show that the derivative is exact. Define an arbitrary function (e.g. a Gaussian) and initialize its analytical derivative on the same spatial grid. Calculate the numerical derivative and the difference to the analytical solution. Vary the wavenumber content of the analytical function. Does it make a difference? Why is the numerical result not entirely exact?

In [ ]:
# Basic parameters
# ---------------------------------------------------------------
nx = 128
x, dx = np.linspace(2*np.pi/nx, 2*np.pi, nx, retstep=True)
sigma = 0.5
xo = np.pi

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#################################################################

In [ ]:



Exercise 3¶

Now that the numerical derivative is available, we can visually inspect our results. Make a plot of both, the analytical and numerical derivatives together with the difference error.

In [ ]:
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