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The Potential of Continuous, Local Atomic Clock Measurements for Earthquake Prediction and Volcanology

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 Added by Ruxandra Bondarescu
 Publication date 2015
  fields Physics
and research's language is English




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Modern optical atomic clocks along with the optical fiber technology currently being developed can measure the geoid, which is the equipotential surface that extends the mean sea level on continents, to a precision that competes with existing technology. In this proceeding, we point out that atomic clocks have the potential to not only map the sea level surface on continents, but also look at variations of the geoid as a function of time with unprecedented timing resolution. The local time series of the geoid has a plethora of applications. These include potential improvement in the predictions of earthquakes and volcanoes, and closer monitoring of ground uplift in areas where hydraulic fracturing is performed.



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Recent technological advances in optical atomic clocks are opening new perspectives for the direct determination of geopotential differences between any two points at a centimeter-level accuracy in geoid height. However, so far detailed quantitative estimates of the possible improvement in geoid determination when adding such clock measurements to existing data are lacking. We present a first step in that direction with the aim and hope of triggering further work and efforts in this emerging field of chronometric geodesy and geophysics. We specifically focus on evaluating the contribution of this new kind of direct measurements in determining the geopotential at high spatial resolution (~ 10 km). We studied two test areas, both located in France and corresponding to a middle (Massif Central) and high (Alps) mountainous terrain. These regions are interesting because the gravitational field strength varies greatly from place to place at high spatial resolution due to the complex topography. Our method consists in first generating a synthetic high resolution geopotential map, then drawing synthetic measurement data (gravimetry and clock data) from it, and finally reconstructing the geopotential map from that data using least squares collocation. The quality of the reconstructed map is then assessed by comparing it to the original one used to generate the data. We show that adding only a few clock data points (less than 1 % of the gravimetry data) reduces the bias significantly and improves the standard deviation by a factor 3. The effect of the data coverage and data quality on the results is investigated, and the trade-off between the measurement noise level and the number of data points is discussed.
An article for the Springer Encyclopedia of Complexity and System Science
We compare two optical clocks based on the $^2$S$_{1/2}(F=0)to {}^2$D$_{3/2}(F=2)$ electric quadrupole (E2) and the $^2$S$_{1/2}(F=0)to {}^2$F$_{7/2}(F=3)$ electric octupole (E3) transition of $^{171}$Yb$^{+}$ and measure the frequency ratio $ u_{mathrm{E3}}/ u_{mathrm{E2}}=0.932,829,404,530,965,376(32)$. We determine the transition frequency $ u_{E3}=642,121,496,772,645.10(8)$ Hz using two caesium fountain clocks. Repeated measurements of both quantities over several years are analyzed for potential violations of local position invariance. We improve by factors of about 20 and 2 the limits for fractional temporal variations of the fine structure constant $alpha$ to $1.0(1.1)times10^{-18}/mathrm{yr}$ and of the proton-to-electron mass ratio $mu$ to $-8(36)times10^{-18}/mathrm{yr}$. Using the annual variation of the Suns gravitational potential at Earth $Phi$, we improve limits for a potential coupling of both constants to gravity, $(c^2/alpha) (dalpha/dPhi)=14(11)times 10^{-9}$ and $(c^2/mu) (dmu/dPhi)=7(45)times 10^{-8}$.
We propose two new methods to calibrate the parameters of the Epidemic-Type Aftershock Sequence (ETAS) model based on expectation maximization (EM) while accounting for temporal variation of catalog completeness. The first method allows for model calibration on earthquake catalogs with long history, featuring temporal variation of the magnitude of completeness, $m_c$. This extended calibration technique is beneficial for long-term Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment (PSHA), which is often based on a mixture of instrumental and historical catalogs. The second method jointly estimates ETAS parameters and high-frequency detection incompleteness to address the potential biases in parameter calibration due to short-term aftershock incompleteness. For this, we generalize the concept of completeness magnitude and consider a rate- and magnitude-dependent detection probability $-$ embracing incompleteness instead of avoiding it. Using synthetic tests, we show that both methods can accurately invert the parameters of simulated catalogs. We then use them to estimate ETAS parameters for California using the earthquake catalog since 1932. To explore how the newly gained information from the second method affects earthquakes predictability, we conduct pseudo-prospective forecasting experiments for California. Our proposed model significantly outperforms the base ETAS model, and we find that the ability to include small earthquakes for simulation of future scenarios is the main driver of the improvement. Our results point towards a preference of earthquakes to trigger similarly sized aftershocks, which has potentially major implications for our understanding of earthquake interaction mechanisms and for the future of seismicity forecasting.
We analyze possible effects of the dark matter environment on the atomic clock stability measurements. The dark matter is assumed to exist in a form of waves of ultralight scalar fields or in a form of topological defects (monopoles and strings). We identify dark matter signal signatures in clock Allan deviation plots that can be used to constrain the dark matter coupling to the Standard Model fields. The existing data on the Al+/Hg+ clock comparison are used to put new limits on the dilaton dark matter in the region of masses m > 10^{-15} eV. We also estimate the sensitivities of future atomic clock experiments in space, including the cesium microwave and strontium optical clocks aboard the International Space Station, as well as a potential nuclear clock. These experiments are expected to put new limits on the topological dark matter in the range of masses 10^{-10} eV < m < 10^{-6} eV.
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