SENSE: Seismology and ENvironmental background Science facility Enabler

A range of diverse, timely, and impactful physics and earth science research could be conducted with further investment in the Boulby Underground Laboratory (BUL). Terrestrial long-baseline atom interferometers have been proposed to measure gravitational waves and hunt for ultralight dark matter signatures with unprecedented precision. A proposed seismological and earth science laboratory could significantly improve monitoring of CO2 storage and wind farms in the North Sea, whilst simultaneously observing signals revealing the structure of Earth's interior, and facilitating coupled micro- and macro-scale processes. Before these proposed experiments, and many others, can be deployed at the BUL, a thorough measurement of background vibrations in and around the mine needs to be conducted.

This study will perform the first broadband characterisation of seismo-acoustic noise at Boulby, both at the surface using a seismic array, and at-depth using novel fibre-optic acoustic sensors and a dynamic deployment of broadband seismometers. The results of this initial survey will allow for early estimations of environmental impact on the sensitivity of long-baseline quantum sensors at BUL, and to inform what continual monitoring would be needed for experiments like the Atom Interferometer Observatory and Network (AION) to operate at maximum precision. Likewise, in the earth sciences research domain, the proposed set of surface and deep seismic arrays will be an initial step into outfitting the BUL as a novel seismic and earth science laboratory with the potential to be a world leading facility for testing Earth imaging techniques and data synthesis through the varied instrument arrays.

Results of this characterisation will also provide valuable datasets that can be used by other experiments wishing to move underground such as new quantum sensing technologies, quantum computers, and atomic clock networks, all of which rely on low vibrational noise and long-term stability, allowing them to make well-informed calculations of expected background noise and empower their decision-making about BUL.