Discussion on the damping factor and improvement of the Levenberg-Marquardt method

The ill-posed problem is the key obstacle to obtain the accurate inversion results in the geophysical inversion field, and the Levenberg-Marquardt 1, 2 (hereinafter referred to as the L-M method) method has been widely used as it can effectively improve the ill-posed problems. However, the inversion results obtained by the L-M method are usually stable but incorrect, the reason is that the damping factor in the L-M method is difficult to solve, and it is usually approximated with a positive constant by experience or through some fitting methods. This paper uses the binary gravity model to demonstrate that the damping factor in the L-M method cannot be regarded as a positive constant only, it should have the following characteristics: (i) the damping factor is a vector, not just a constant; (ii) the values of the vector are composed of both positive and negative constants, not just positive constants; (iii) the corresponding value in the vector is close or equal to ∞ when the corresponding density block’s value is close or equal to zero. Even if the above characteristics have been found in the L-M method, it is difficult to reasonably estimate the damping factor as the damping factor oscillate severely due to the third characteristic, and the improved L-M method is proposed which effectively avoids the damping factor’s severe oscillation problem. The strategy of obtaining the reasonable damping factor is given finally.