The role of geophysics in the evaluation of candidate sites of the Einstein Telescope

17. Juni 2019

Vortragender: Prof. Jan Harms Assistant Professor GSSI - Gran Sasso Science Institute

Uhrzeit: 10:00

Ort: Geomatikum, Raum G 1438

Many aspects determine the quality of a candidate site for the future underground gravitational-wave detector Einstein Telescope, and it is the responsibility of the people involved in the planning to carry out a thorough study of all candidate sites before a site is selected. Site properties concerning, for example, geohydrology and geology have a strong potential influence on the construction cost of a detector. Others, such as environmental disturbances, can influence the sensitivity of the future detector and also its duty cycle. In this talk, I will first give an overview of site-characterization tasks, and then focus on environmental disturbances. It will be shown that even the weakest couplings between environment and detector are important to consider, which includes the gravitational coupling with environmental fields. Especially, seismic, acoustic, and temperature fields play important roles. In fact, the Einstein Telescope is planned to be constructed underground to suppress environmental noise in the detector data, which reveals the mitigation of environmental noise as one of the main cost drivers. It is important that detailed observations and modeling of the environment are carried out to be able to predict the scientific potential of a candidate site.