PULSE STABILIZATION IN A STRONGLY HETEROGENEOUS LAYERED MEDIUM

A strongly heterogeneous stratified elastic medium occupies a slab of finite thickness. The medium parameters vary randomly with correlation length of O(epsilon(2)). A pulse with O(epsilon) wavelength enters th e slab at one end. It travels coherently through the slab with a slown ess near to that predicted by effective medium theory. Relative to a c ertain realization-dependent co-moving frame of reference the pulse st abilizes to its mean as epsilon tends to zero. It broadens as it trave ls as in the O'Doherty-Anstey theory, but here the variations in mediu m properties are not assumed to be small as in that theory, and the pu lse travels with a travel time differing significantly from the charac teristic first arrival time.