Distributed Acoustic Fiber Sensing for Research Campuses and Large Scientific Infrastructures -- The Hamburg WAVE proto-network

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the use of Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) on research campuses and large infrastructures to monitor environmental vibrations, aiding high-precision experiments and infrastructure management.

Contribution

It presents a seismic measurement campaign with a 12 km fiber network, showcasing DAS's ability to detect various vibrations and analyze noise coupling in scientific environments.

Findings

DAS can observe natural and anthropogenic vibrations in large infrastructures.

The proto-network successfully monitored vibrations across 12 km of fiber.

Results highlight DAS's potential and challenges in scientific infrastructure monitoring.

Abstract

Here, we demonstrate and investigate how Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) can be utilized on research campuses and in large scientific infrastructures to study environmental vibrations and reduce their impact on high-precision experiments. We first discuss the potential of DAS in the context of particle accelerators, gravitational wave detection experiments and research campuses. Next, we present the results of our seismic measurement campaign conducted with our proto-network, which involved the probing of over 12 km of fiber, in May 2021. This campaign was conducted by the Hamburg WAVE initiative in Science City Hamburg Bahrenfeld and included DESY, the European XFEL, PETRA III and the University of Hamburg. Our proto-network confirms the ability to observe natural, anthropogenic, and infrastructural vibrations and how and where these couple into different parts of the heterogeneously set up fiber network. We also present results on a study of noise and motion coupling aspects of DAS probing double-redundant fiber loops in a unique environment, the European XFEL. Our results show that DAS greatly benefits research campuses and large scientific infrastructures and they highlight the opportunities and challenges of implementing and operating such seismic networks.