“…Accurate acoustic wave propagation is a highly challenging computational problem that is crucial to acoustic modeling, imaging, and inversion. To solve the time-domain or frequency-domain acoustic wave equation in a heterogeneous medium, it is necessary to apply numerical modeling techniques, such as the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method [1][2][3][4][5], finite-difference frequency-domain (FDFD) [6,7], finite-element time-domain (FETD) [8][9][10][11], finite-element frequency-domain (FEFD) [12], pseudo-spectral time-domain (PSTD) [13][14][15], and spectral-element time-domain (SETD) methods [16][17][18]. The FDTD method is the most popular numerical scheme for simulating acoustic wave propagation.…”