Arjun Datta
Assistant Professor
Earth and Climate Science
Theoretical and computational seismology, seismic tomography, seismic interferometry, inverse theory
arjundatta@iiserpune.ac.in
Arjun read Physics at St. Stephen's College, Delhi and got a Masters degree in Applied Geophysics from IIT Roorkee. He obtained his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2017, and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at TIFR (Mumbai), before joining IISER Pune in January 2021.
Research
SEISMOLOGY
Arjun is a seismologist in the field of Earth structure estimation or imaging. With a background in global seismology, his research primarily focusses on theoretical and methodological challenges associated with exploiting seismic surface waves and the ambient seismic field (ambient noise). Surface waves are used to study the Earth's shear-velocity structure and he is interested in the challenge of reliably incorporating higher mode surface waves, which penetrate much deeper than the commonly used fundamental mode, but also experience complex interactions with the heterogeneous Earth. On the ambient noise side, he is most interested in the nascent field of generalised, modelling-based ambient noise interferometry. This is a rigorous approach to passive seismic imaging which drops the assumption of Green's function retrieval and aims to jointly constrain ambient noise sources as well as Earth structure.
Arjun's work uses computer simulations and seismic data, and its intended application is in high-resolution crustal imaging as well as earthquake hazard assessment, in various parts of India.
Selected Publications
Datta, A., Hanasoge, S., Goudswaard, J. (2019). Finite-frequency inversion of cross-correlation amplitudes for ambient noise source directivity estimation. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 124(7), 6653–6665.
Datta, A. (2019). On the application of the fk-MUSIC method to measurement of multimode surface wave phase velocity dispersion from receiver arrays. Journal of Seismology, 23(2), 243-260.
Datta, A. (2018). SWRT: A package for semi-analytical solutions of surface wave propagation, including mode conversion, across transversely aligned vertical discontinuities, Geoscientific Instrumentation, Methods and Data Systems, 7(1), 101–112.
Datta, A., Priestley K.F., Roecker, S., Chapman, C.H. (2017). Surface wave mode coupling and the validity of the path average approximation in surface waveform inversions: an empirical assessment. Geophysical Journal International, 211(2):1077–1098.