Three-dimensional magnetotellurics modeling using edge-based finite-element unstructured meshes

Three-dimensional forward modeling is a challenge for geometrically complex magnetotellurics (MT) problems. We present a new edge-based finite-element algorithm using an unstructured mesh for accurately and efficiently simulating 3D MT responses. The electric field curl-curl equation in the frequency domain was used to deduce the H (curl) variation weak form of the MT forward problem, the Galerkin rule was used to derive a linear finite-element equation on the linear-edge tetrahedroid space, and, finally, a BI-CGSTAB solver was used to estimate the unknown electric fields. A local mesh refinement technique in the neighbor of the measuring MT stations was used to greatly improve the accuracies of the numerical solutions. Four synthetic models validated the powerful performance of our algorithms. We believe that our method will effectively contribute to processing more complex MT studies.