  We suggest an initial model building technique using time gain functions in
the Laplace domain. Applying the gain expressed as a power of time is
equivalent to taking the partial derivative of the Laplace-domain wavefield
with respect to a damping constant. We construct an objective function, which
minimizes the logarithmic differences between the gained field data and the
partial derivative of the modeled data with respect to the damping constant. We
calculate the modeled wavefield, the partial derivative wavefield, and the
gradient direction in the Laplace domain using the analytic Green's function
starting from a constant velocity model. This is an efficient method to
generate an accurate initial model for a following Laplace-domain inversion.
Numerical examples using two marine field datasets confirm that a starting
model updated once from a scratch using the gradient direction calculated with
the proposed method can be successfully used for a subsequent Laplace-domain
inversion.
