Photonic Seismology

International Photonics and OptoElectronics Meetings 2019, OFDA, 11/11/2019-14/11/2019, Wuhan, China.One of the greatest outstanding challenges in seismology is the sparsity of instrumentation across the Earth, particularly in the oceans. In this work we show that optical fiberbased distributed acoustic sensors (DAS) can represent a low-cost solution (basically inexistent so far) for monitoring seismicity in remote areas of the ocean. This solution can retrofit existing telecommunication optical fiber cables lying in the ocean and transform them (with no basic change in the cable itself) into powerful seismic sensing arrays. With a single optoelectronic unit in the end of the cable (onshore), a full span of 50-100 km can be monitored, with thousands of measuring points interrogated.European CommissionMinisterio de Economía y CompetitividadMinisterio de Ciencia, Innovación y UniversidadesComunidad de Madri