SUMMARY: Single-component ring lasers have provided high-resolution observations of Earth’s rotation rate as well as local earthquake- or otherwise-induced rotational ground motions. Here, we present the design, construction and operational aspects of ROMY, a four-component, tetrahedral-shaped ring laser installed at the Geophysical Observatory Fürstenfeldbruck near Munich, Germany. Four equilateral, triangular-shaped ring lasers with 12 m side length provide rotational motions that can be combined to construct the complete vector of Earth’s rotation from a point measurement with very high resolution. Combined with a classic broad-band seismometer, we obtain the most accurate 6 degree-of-freedom ground motion measurement system to date, enabling local and teleseismic observations as well as the analysis of ocean-generated Love and Rayleigh waves. The specific design and construction details are discussed as are the resulting consequences for permanent observations. We present seismic observations of local, regional and global earthquakes as well as seasonal variations of ocean-generated rotation noise. The current resolution of polar motion is discussed and strategies how to further improve long-term stability of the multicomponent ring laser system are presented.

The additional observation of three components of rotational ground motions has benefits for tilt‐seismometer coupling (e.g., ocean‐bottom seismometry and volcano seismology), local site characterization, wavefield separation, source inversion, glacial and planetary seismology, as well as the monitoring of structural health. Field applications have been mostly hampered by the lack of portable sensors with appropriate broadband operation range and weak‐motion sensitivity. Here, we present field observations of the first commercial portable broadband rotation sensor specifically designed for seismology. The sensor is a three‐component fiber‐optic gyro strictly sensitive to ground rotation only. The sensor field performance and records are validated by comparing it with both array‐derived rotation measurements and a navigation‐type gyro. We present observations of the 2018 $Mw$ 5.4 Hualien earthquake and the 2016 central Italy earthquake sequence. Processing collocated rotation and classical translation records shows the potential in retrieving wave propagation direction and local structural velocity from point measurements comparable to small‐scale arrays of seismic stations. We consider the availability of a portable, broadband, high sensitivity, and low self‐noise rotation sensor to be a milestone in seismic instrumentation. Complete and accurate ground‐motion observations (assuming a rigid base plate) are possible in the near, local, or regional field, opening up a wide range of seismological applications.

Recent progress in rotational sensor technology has made it possible to directly measure rotational ground-motion induced by seismic waves. When combined with conventional inertial seismometer recordings, the new sensors allow one to locally observe six degrees of freedom (6DOF) of ground-motion, composed of three orthogonal components of translational motion and three orthogonal components of rotational motion. The applications of such 6DOF measurements are manifold—ranging from wavefield characterization, separation, and reconstruction to the reduction of non-uniqueness in seismic inverse problems—and have the potential to revolutionize the way seismic data are acquired and processed. However, the seismological community has yet to embrace rotational ground-motion as a new observable. The aim of this paper is to give a high-level introduction into the field of 6DOF seismology using illustrative examples and to summarize recent progress made in this relatively young field. It is intended for readers with a general background in seismology. In order to illustrate the seismological value of rotational ground-motion data, we provide the first-ever 6DOF processing example of a teleseismic earthquake recorded on a multicomponent ring laser observatory and demonstrate how wave parameters (phase velocity, propagation direction, and ellipticity angle) and wave types of multiple phases can be automatically estimated using single-station 6DOF processing tools. Python codes to reproduce this processing example are provided in an accompanying Jupyter notebook.

We present a methodology to invert seismic data for a localized area by combining source-side wavefield injection and receiver-side extrapolation method. Despite the high resolving power of seismic full waveform inversion, the computational cost for practical scale elastic or viscoelastic waveform inversion remains a heavy burden. This can be much more severe for time-lapse surveys, which require real-time seismic imaging on a daily or weekly basis. Besides, changes of the structure during time-lapse surveys are likely to occur in a small area rather than the whole region of seismic experiments, such as oil and gas reservoir or CO₂ injection wells. We thus propose an approach that allows to image effectively and quantitatively the localized structure changes far deep from both source and receiver arrays. In our method, we perform both forward and back propagation only inside the target region. First, we look for the equivalent source expression enclosing the region of interest by using the wavefield injection method. Second, we extrapolate wavefield from physical receivers located near the Earth's surface or on the ocean bottom to an array of virtual receivers in the subsurface by using correlation-type representation theorem. In this study, we present various 2-D elastic numerical examples of the proposed method and quantitatively evaluate errors in obtained models, in comparison to those of conventional full-model inversions. The results show that the proposed localized waveform inversion is not only efficient and robust but also accurate even under the existence of errors in both initial models and observed data.

A novel acquisition and processing technique is described to derive surface-wave dispersion curves from seismic ambient noise. We have determined that the use of spatial gradients of the wavefield provides new opportunities for high-resolution near-surface characterization with minimal field effort. In contrast to conventional active source data analysis that provides spatially smoothed results from large and dense arrays of receivers, our method provides local phase velocity information from ambient noise using only three closely spaced geophones. A time-frequency domain polarization-based analysis scheme is implemented to (1) detect the useful part of the data satisfying fundamental gradiometry assumptions, (2) estimate the noise source azimuthal distribution, and finally, (3) derive the desired local dispersion curves. The robustness and effectiveness of the developed method is demonstrated using the synthetic and real data, with a comparison to results from active source measurements.

Back azimuth (BAz) information can be determined from combined measurements of rotations and translations at a single site. Such six degree‐of‐freedom (6‐DoF) measurements are reasonably stable in delivering similar information compared to a small‐scale array of three‐component seismometers. Here we investigate whether a 6‐DoF approach is applicable to tracking seismic sources. While common approaches determining the timing and location of energy sources generating seismic waves rely on the information of P‐waves, here we use S‐waves. We track back azimuths of directly arriving SH‐waves in the two‐dimensional case, P‐converted SV‐waves, direct SV‐ and direct SH‐waves in the three‐dimensional case. For data analysis, we compare a cross‐correlation approach using a grid‐search optimization algorithm with a polarization analysis method. We successfully recover the rupture path and rupture velocity with only one station, under the assumption of an approximately known fault location. Using more than one station, rupture imaging in space and time is possible without a priori assumptions. We discuss the effects of rupture directivity, supershear rupture velocity, source‐receiver geometry, wavefield interference, and noise. We verify our approach with the analysis of moving traffic noise sources using 6‐DoF observations. The collocated classic seismometer and newly built ring laser gyroscope ROMY near Munich, Germany, allow us to record high‐fidelity, broadband 6‐DoF (particle velocity and rotational rate) ground motions. We successfully track vehicles and estimate their speed while traveling along a nearby highway using the estimated BAz as a function of time of a single station observation.