arXiv subjects

Domenico Giardini

Publications and source records attributed to Domenico Giardini.

18 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Discrimination of Tectonic, Swarm and Impact-related Marsquakes using Spectral Characteristics

The NASA InSight mission observed over 2000 marsquakes in the course of its three year mission. These quakes varied in magnitude between 1.5 and 4.5, as well as in spectral content. We present a simple framework to describe the spectral characteristics of all observed marsquakes, based on source process; propagation through the mantle or crust; and local, receiver-side amplification. We assign to each quake an objective measure of its amplitude, as well as the spectral decay created by the duration of the rupture and the dampening of high frequencies due to visco-elastic attenuation. Together, this allows us to obtain characteristic patterns of the whole marsquake dataset, e.g. in terms of event magnitudes, source size, and - for quakes caused by meteoritic impacts - crater size. We show that a significant fraction of all marsquakes - the high-frequency quakes - form a swarm that is likely not caused by tectonic processes in rocks. Our analysis allows separation of the whole marsquake catalogue into three event classes, of tectonic quakes, meteoritic impacts, and swarm events. We finally conclude that the largest marsquake, S1222a, most likely belongs to the group of meteoritic impacts.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2025

Characterisation of the Bedretto Underground Site for Fundamental Physics Experiments

Underground laboratories provide the ultra-low background and low-vibration environments essential for rare-event searches, gravitational-wave detection, and quantum-sensing technologies. We report a comprehensive environmental characterisation of the Bedretto tunnel in Ticino, Switzerland, a site offering horizontal access, excellent infrastructure, and the potential to be be Europe's second-deepest and quietest underground laboratory. At the prospective physics site, located beneath an overburden exceeding 1400 m, we measure the cosmic-muon, gamma-ray, and neutron fluxes, as well as the radon concentration, magnetic-field spectrum, and seismic backgrounds. The muon flux is suppressed by six orders of magnitude relative to the surface, consistent with an effective depth of about 4000 metre water equivalent, gamma-ray and neutron measurements reflect the local geology and guide shielding requirements for future particle and nuclear physics experiments. Magnetic and seismic noise levels are found to be exceptionally low, meeting or exceeding the criteria for next-generation atom-interferometric gravitational-wave detectors. These results establish the site as a highly competitive, accessible deep-underground location for fundamental-physics experiments.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2025

Searching for extreme mass ratio inspirals in LISA: from identification to parameter estimation

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) is a planned space-based observatory designed to detect gravitational waves (GWs) within the millihertz frequency range. LISA is anticipated to observe the inspiral of compact objects into black holes at the centers of galaxies, so called extreme-mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs). However, the extraction of these long-lived complex signals is challenging due to the large size and multimodality of the search space. In this study, we introduce a new search strategy that allows us to find EMRI signals in noisy data from wide priors all the way to performing parameter estimation. This work is an important step in understanding how to extract EMRIs from future LISA data.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2024

Global Analysis of LISA Data with Galactic Binaries and Massive Black Hole Binaries

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) is a planned space-based observatory to measure gravitational waves in the millihertz frequency band. This frequency band is expected to be dominated by signals from millions of Galactic binaries and tens of merging massive black hole binaries. The LISA Data Challenge 2a is focused on robust signal extraction from a blend of these two types of gravitational wave signals. Here, we introduce a novel high performance and cost-effective global fit pipeline extracting and characterizing galactic binary and massive black hole binary signals and estimate the noise of the residual. We perform the pipeline in a time-evolving weekly analysis starting with an observation time of 1 week until we reach a full year. As expected we detect more galactic binaries and massive black hole binaries bringing the noise estimate of the residual closer to the instrument noise with each week of additional observation time. Furthermore, we present a novel maximum likelihood estimate-based algorithm for extracting multiple massive black hole binaries. Additionally, we demonstrate a massive black hole binary signal extraction with a more accurate LISA response, considering higher harmonic modes, in a noisy data set.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2024

Detection and Prediction of Future Massive Black Hole Mergers with Machine Learning and Truncated Waveforms

We present a novel machine learning framework tailored to detect massive black hole binaries observed by spaceborne gravitational wave detectors like the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) and predict their future merger times. The detection is performed via convolutional neural networks that analyze time-evolving Time-Delay Interferometry (TDI) spectrograms and utilize variations in signal power to trigger alerts. The prediction of future merger times is accomplished with reinforcement learning. Here, the proposed algorithm dynamically refines time-to-merger predictions by assimilating new data as it becomes available. Deep Q-learning serves as the core technique of the approach, utilizing a neural network to estimate Q-values throughout the observational state space. To enhance robust learning in a noisy environment, we integrate an actor-critic mechanism that segregates action proposals from their evaluation, thus harnessing the advantages of policy-based and value-based learning paradigms. We leverage merger estimation obtained via template matching with truncated waveforms to generate rewards for the reinforcement learning agent. These estimations come with uncertainties, which magnify as the merger event stretches further into the future. The reinforcement learning setup is shown to adapt to these uncertainties by employing a policy fine-tuning approach, ensuring the reliability of predictions despite the varying degrees of template-matching precision. The algorithm denotes a first step toward a low-latency model that provides early warnings for impending transient phenomena. By delivering timely and accurate forecasts of merger events, the framework supports the coordination of gravitational wave observations with accompanied electromagnetic counterparts, thus enhancing the prospects of multi-messenger astronomy. We use the LISA Spritz data challenge for validation.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2024

Detection and Mitigation of Glitches in LISA Data: A Machine Learning Approach

The proposed Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission is tasked with the detection and characterization of gravitational waves from various sources in the universe. This endeavor is challenged by transient displacement and acceleration noise artifacts, commonly called glitches. Uncalibrated glitches impact the interferometric measurements and decrease the signal quality of LISA's time-delay interferometry (TDI) data used for astrophysical data analysis. The paper introduces a novel calibration pipeline that employs a neural network ensemble to detect, characterize, and mitigate transient glitches of diverse morphologies. A convolutional neural network is designed for anomaly detection, accurately identifying and temporally pinpointing anomalies within the TDI time series. Then, a hybrid neural network is developed to differentiate between gravitational wave bursts and glitches, while a long short-term memory (LSTM) network architecture is deployed for glitch estimation. The LSTM network acts as a TDI inverter by processing noisy TDI data to obtain the underlying glitch dynamics. Finally, the inferred noise transient is subtracted from the interferometric measurements, enhancing data integrity and reducing biases in the parameter estimation of astronomical targets. We propose a low-latency solution featuring generalized LSTM networks primed for rapid response data processing and alert service in high-demand scenarios like predicting binary black hole mergers. The research highlights the critical role of machine learning in advancing methodologies for data calibration and astrophysical analysis in LISA.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2023

Accelerating global parameter estimation of gravitational waves from Galactic binaries using a genetic algorithm and GPUs

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) is a planned space-based gravitational wave telescope with the goal of measuring gravitational waves in the milli-Hertz frequency band, which is dominated by millions of Galactic binaries. While some of these binaries produce signals that are loud enough to stand out and be extracted, most of them blur into a confusion foreground. Current methods for analyzing the full frequency band recorded by LISA to extract as many Galactic binaries as possible and to obtain Bayesian posterior distributions for each of the signals are computationally expensive. We introduce a new approach to accelerate the extraction of the best fitting solutions for Galactic binaries across the entire frequency band from data with multiple overlapping signals. Furthermore, we use these best fitting solutions to omit the burn-in stage of a Markov chain Monte Carlo method and to take full advantage of GPU-accelerated signal simulation, allowing us to compute posterior distributions in 2 seconds per signal on a laptop-grade GPU.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2023

Lithosphere strain rate and stress field orientations near the Alpine arc in Switzerland

In this study we test whether principal components of the strain rate and stress tensors align within Switzerland. We find that 1) Helvetic Nappes line (HNL) is the relevant tectonic boundary to define different domains of crustal stress/surface strain rates orientations and 2) orientations of T- axes (of moment tensor solutions) and long-term asthenosphere cumulative finite strain (from SKS shear wave splitting) are consistent at the scale of the Alpine arc in Switzerland. At a more local scale, we find that seismic activity and surface deformation are in agreement but in three regions (Basel, Swiss Jura and Ticino); possibly because of the low levels of deformation and/or seismicity. In the Basel area, deep seismicity exists while surface deformation is absent. In the Ticino and the Swiss Jura, where seismic activity is close to absent, surface deformation is detected at a level of ~2 10E-8/yr (~6.3 10E-16/s).

physics.geo-ph↗

arXiv2022

Bayesian parameter-estimation of Galactic binaries in LISA data with Gaussian Process Regression

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), which is currently under construction, is designed to measure gravitational wave signals in the milli-Hertz frequency band. It is expected that tens of millions of Galactic binaries will be the dominant sources of observed gravitational waves. The Galactic binaries producing signals at mHz frequency range emit quasi monochromatic gravitational waves, which will be constantly measured by LISA. To resolve as many Galactic binaries as possible is a central challenge of the upcoming LISA data set analysis. Although it is estimated that tens of thousands of these overlapping gravitational wave signals are resolvable, and the rest blurs into a galactic foreground noise; extracting tens of thousands of signals using Bayesian approaches is still computationally expensive. We developed a new end-to-end pipeline using Gaussian Process Regression to model the log-likelihood function in order to rapidly compute Bayesian posterior distributions. Using the pipeline we are able to solve the Lisa Data Challenge (LDC) 1-3 consisting of noisy data as well as additional challenges with overlapping signals and particularly faint signals.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2022

Tectonics of Cerberus Fossae unveiled by marsquakes

The InSight mission has measured Mars' seismicity since February 2018 and has allowed to investigate tectonics on another planet. Seismic data shows that most of the widely distributed surface faults are not seismically active, and that seismicity is mostly originating from a single graben structure, the Cerberus Fossae. We show that both major families of marsquakes characterized by low and high frequency content, LF and HF events respectively, are located on central and eastern parts of this graben system. LF hypocenters are located at 15-50 km depth and the spectral character suggests a structurally weak, potentially warm source region consistent with recent volcanic activity at those depths. HF marsquakes occur in the brittle, shallow part of the crust and might originate in fault planes associated with the graben flanks. Estimated magnitudes are between 2.8 and 3.8, resulting in a total seismic moment release within Cerberus Fossae of 1.4-5.6 $\times10^{15}$ Nm/yr, or at least half of the observed value of the entire planet. Our findings confirm that Cerberus Fossae represents a unique tectonic setting shaped by current day volcanic processes, with implications for minimum local heat flow.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2022

Tidal insights into rocky and icy bodies: An introduction and overview

Solid body tides provide key information on the interior structure, evolution, and origin of the planetary bodies. Our Solar system harbours a very diverse population of planetary bodies, including those composed of rock, ice, gas, or a mixture of all. While a rich arsenal of geophysical methods has been developed over several years to infer knowledge about the interior of the Earth, the inventory of tools to investigate the interiors of other Solar-system bodies remains limited. With seismic data only available for the Earth, the Moon, and Mars, geodetic measurements, including the observation of the tidal response, have become especially valuable and therefore, has played an important role in understanding the interior and history of several Solar system bodies. To use tidal response measurements as a means to obtain constraints on the interior structure of planetary bodies, appropriate understanding of the viscoelastic reaction of the materials from which the planets are formed is needed. Here, we review the fundamental aspects of the tidal modeling and the information on the present-day interior properties and evolution of several planets and moons based on studying their tidal response. We begin with an outline of the theory of viscoelasticity and tidal response. Next, we proceed by discussing the information on the tidal response and the inferred structure of Mercury, Venus, Mars and its moons, the Moon, and the largest satellites of giant planets, obtained from the analysis of the data that has been provided by space missions. We also summarise the upcoming possibilities offered by the currently planned missions.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2022

Low Frequency Marsquakes and Where to Find Them: Back Azimuth Determination Using a Polarization Analysis Approach

NASA's InSight mission on Mars continues to record seismic data over 3 years after landing, and to date, over a thousand marsquakes have been identified. With only a single seismic station, the determination of the epicentral location is far more challenging than on Earth. The Marsquake Service (MQS) produces seismicity catalogues from data collected by InSight and provides distance and back azimuth estimates when these can be reliably determined - when both are available these are combined to provide a location. Currently, MQS do not assign a back azimuth to the vast majority of marsquakes. In this work we develop and apply a polarization analysis method to determine the back azimuth of seismic events from the polarization of observed P and S-wave arrivals. The method is first applied to synthetic marsquakes, and then calibrated using a set of well-located earthquakes that have been recorded in Tennant Creek, Australia. We find that the back azimuth is estimated reliably using our polarization method. The same approach is then used for a set of high quality marsquakes recorded up to October 2021. We are able to estimate back azimuths for 24 marsquakes, 16 of these without MQS back azimuths. We locate most events to the east of InSight, in the general region of Cerberus Fossae.

physics.geo-ph↗

arXiv2021

The Tidal-Thermal Evolution of the Pluto-Charon System

Existence of subsurface oceans on the satellites of the giant planets and Trans-Neptunian objects has been predicted for some time. Oceans on icy worlds exert a considerable influence on the dynamics of the ice-ocean system and, because of the astrobiological potential, represent an important objective for future missions. The Pluto-Charon system is representative of an icy moon orbiting a dwarf planet formed from the remnants of a giant impact. Evolution of icy moons is primarily controlled by the mode and efficiency of heat transfer through the outer ice shell, which is influenced by the presence of impurities, by tidal dissipation in the ice shell, and the radioactive element budget in the core. Previous studies on the evolution of the Pluto-Charon system considered either only the thermal or the tidal evolution, and in the cases where both were considered, the important effect of the presence of impurities in the liquid oceans was not addressed. We consider the joint tidal-thermal evolution of the system by combining a comprehensive tidal model that incorporates a viscoelastic tidal response with a parameterized convection model developed for icy worlds. This approach enables an extensive analysis of the conditions required for formation and maintenance of subsurface liquid oceans to the present. Our results show that because of fast circularization and synchronization of the orbits, tidal heating is only important during the early stages of evolution (<1 Myr). We test the sensitivity of our results to the initial orbital and thermal parameters. In all the cases, oceans on Pluto are always predicted to remain liquid to the present, ranging from 40 km to 150-km thick, whereas oceans on Charon have solidified. This is supported by New Horizons observations of extensional faults on Pluto and both extensional and compressional faults on Charon.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2019

LISA Pathfinder

Since the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for the observation of gravitational waves, it is fair to say that the epoch of gravitational wave astronomy (GWs) has begun. However, a number of interesting sources of GWs can only be observed from space. To demonstrate the feasibility of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), a future gravitational wave observatory in space, the LISA Pathfinder satellite was launched on December, 3rd 2015. Measurements of the spurious forces accelerating an otherwise free-falling test mass, and detailed investigations of the individual subsystems needed to achieve the free-fall, have been conducted throughout the mission. This overview article starts with the purpose and aim of the mission, explains satellite hardware and mission operations and ends with a summary of selected important results and an outlook towards LISA. From the LISA Pathfinder experience, we can conclude that the proposed LISA mission is feasible.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2018

LISA Pathfinder Platform Stability and Drag-free Performance

The science operations of the LISA Pathfinder mission has demonstrated the feasibility of sub-femto-g free-fall of macroscopic test masses necessary to build a LISA-like gravitational wave observatory in space. While the main focus of interest, i.e. the optical axis or the $x$-axis, has been extensively studied, it is also of interest to evaluate the stability of the spacecraft with respect to all the other degrees of freedom. The current paper is dedicated to such a study, with a focus set on an exhaustive and quantitative evaluation of the imperfections and dynamical effects that impact the stability with respect to its local geodesic. A model of the complete closed-loop system provides a comprehensive understanding of each part of the in-loop coordinates spectra. As will be presented, this model gives very good agreements with LISA Pathfinder flight data. It allows one to identify the physical noise source at the origin and the physical phenomena underlying the couplings. From this, the performances of the stability of the spacecraft, with respect to its geodesic, are extracted as a function of frequency. Close to $1 mHz$, the stability of the spacecraft on the $X_{SC}$, $Y_{SC}$ and $Z_{SC}$ degrees of freedom is shown to be of the order of $5.0\ 10^{-15} m\ s^{-2}/\sqrt{Hz}$ for X and $4.0 \ 10^{-14} m\ s^{-2}/\sqrt{Hz}$ for Y and Z. For the angular degrees of freedom, the values are of the order $3\ 10^{-12} rad\ s^{-2}/\sqrt{Hz}$ for $Θ_{SC}$ and $3\ 10^{-13} rad\ s^{-2}/\sqrt{Hz}$ for $H_{SC}$ and $Φ_{SC}$.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2018

Autonomous decision-making against induced seismicity in deep fluid injections

The rise in the frequency of anthropogenic earthquakes due to deep fluid injections is posing serious economic, societal, and legal challenges to geo-energy and waste-disposal projects. We propose an actuarial approach to mitigate this risk, first by defining an autonomous decision-making process based on an adaptive traffic light system (ATLS) to stop risky injections, and second by quantifying a "cost of public safety" based on the probability of an injection-well being abandoned. The ATLS underlying statistical model is first confirmed to be representative of injection-induced seismicity, with examples taken from past reservoir stimulation experiments (mostly from Enhanced Geothermal Systems, EGS). Then the decision strategy is formalized: Being integrable, the model yields a closed-form ATLS solution that maps a risk-based safety standard or norm to an earthquake magnitude not to exceed during stimulation. Finally, the EGS levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) is reformulated in terms of null expectation, with the cost of abandoned injection-well implemented. We find that the price increase to mitigate the increased seismic risk in populated areas can counterbalance the heat credit. However this "public safety cost" disappears if buildings are based on earthquake-resistant designs or if a more relaxed risk safety standard or norm is chosen.

physics.geo-ph↗

arXiv2017

Hierarchical Bayesian modeling of fluid-induced seismicity

In this study, we present a Bayesian hierarchical framework to model fluid-induced seismicity. The framework is based on a non-homogeneous Poisson process (NHPP) with a fluid-induced seismicity rate proportional to the rate of injected fluid. The fluid-induced seismicity rate model depends upon a set of physically meaningful parameters, and has been validated for six fluid-induced case studies. In line with the vision of hierarchical Bayesian modeling, the rate parameters are considered as random variables. We develop both the Bayesian inference and updating rules, which are used to develop a probabilistic forecasting model. We tested the Basel 2006 fluid-induced seismic case study to prove that the hierarchical Bayesian model offers a suitable framework to coherently encode both epistemic uncertainty and aleatory variability. Moreover, it provides a robust and consistent short-term seismic forecasting model suitable for online risk quantification and mitigation.

stat.AP↗

arXiv2017

Laser Interferometer Space Antenna

Following the selection of The Gravitational Universe by ESA, and the successful flight of LISA Pathfinder, the LISA Consortium now proposes a 4 year mission in response to ESA's call for missions for L3. The observatory will be based on three arms with six active laser links, between three identical spacecraft in a triangular formation separated by 2.5 million km. LISA is an all-sky monitor and will offer a wide view of a dynamic cosmos using Gravitational Waves as new and unique messengers to unveil The Gravitational Universe. It provides the closest ever view of the infant Universe at TeV energy scales, has known sources in the form of verification binaries in the Milky Way, and can probe the entire Universe, from its smallest scales near the horizons of black holes, all the way to cosmological scales. The LISA mission will scan the entire sky as it follows behind the Earth in its orbit, obtaining both polarisations of the Gravitational Waves simultaneously, and will measure source parameters with astrophysically relevant sensitivity in a band from below $10^{-4}\,$Hz to above $10^{-1}\,$Hz.

astro-ph.IM↗