ABSTRACTThe wavefield in, and at the surface of, a homogeneous, isotropic, perfectly elastic half‐space, excited by a traction distribution at the surface of the medium is investigated. The emitted wavefield is a spatial convolution of the surface tractions and the spatial impulse response. The properties of the wavefield in the far‐field of the medium are derived and it is shown that the far‐field particle velocity is essentially equal to a weighted sum of the time derivative of the integrated surface tractions, that is, of the components of the ‘ground force’. The theory is valid for an arbitrary geometry and orientation of the surface tractions, and is independent of the boundary conditions at the surface of the medium.The surface tractions are related to a source that consists of a mass distribution with an arbitrary force distribution imposed upon it. A boundary condition is introduced that accounts for the mass load and the forces applied to it but neglects vibrations within the mass. The boundary condition follows from the equation of motion of the surface mass load.The theory is applied to the Vibroseis configuration, using a P‐wave vibrator model with a uniformly distributed force imposed on top of the baseplate, and assuming that horizontal surface traction components are absent. The distribution of displacement and stress directly underneath the baseplate of a single vibrator and an array of vibrators is investigated. Three different boundary conditions are used: (1) assuming uniform pressure, (2) assuming uniform displacement, (3) using the equation of motion of the baseplate as a boundary condition. The calculations of the distribution of stress and displacement over the plate for different elastic media and several frequencies of operation show that only the results obtained with the mixed boundary condition agree with measurements made in the field.The accuracy of three different phase‐feedback signals is compared using synthetic data. Baseplate velocity phase‐feedback leads to huge deviations in the determination of the far‐field wavelet; reaction mass acceleration phase‐feedback looks stable but neglects the differentiating earth filter; and phase‐feedback to a weighted sum of baseplate and reaction mass accelerations becomes unstable with increasing frequency. The instability can be overcome using measurements over the whole baseplate.The model can be extended to