Full‐waveform inversion (FWI) includes both migration and tomography modes. The migration mode acts like a nonlinear least squares migration to map model interfaces with reflections, while the tomography mode behaves as tomography to build a background velocity model. The migration mode is the main response of inverting reflections, while the tomography mode exists in response to inverting both the reflections and refractions. To emphasize one of the two modes in FWI, especially for inverting reflections, the separation of the two modes in the gradient of FWI is required. Here we present a new method to achieve this separation with an angle‐dependent filtering technique in the plane wave domain. We first transform the source and residual wavefields into the plane wave domain with the Fourier transform and then decompose them into the migration and tomography components using the opening angles between the transformed source and residual plane waves. The opening angles close to 180° contribute to the tomography component, while the others correspond to the migration component. We find that this approach is very effective and robust even when the medium is relatively complicated with strong lateral heterogeneities, highly dipping reflectors, and strong anisotropy. This is well demonstrated by theoretical analysis and numerical tests with a synthetic data set and a field data set.

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