Abstract
Analytical formulas are derived to give the point scatterer responses for the zero‐offset and nonzero‐offset migration operators. These formulas are derived under the far‐field approximation for a continuous distribution of sources and receivers, and are denoted as migration Green’s functions. By specifying a homogeneous velocity model with irregular layers, these Green’s functions can be used to quickly compute the synthetic migrated sections without having to compute the modeled data. Thus, these formulas provide a fundamental understanding of migration artifacts and their relationship to the image point location and source‐receiver configuration. This understanding lays the foundation for the next step, elimination of these artifacts by migration deconvolution.