Possibilities and Prospects for the Use of Distributed Fiber Sensors in Geophysics

Abstract A brief review of the applications of distributed acoustic sensors for solving geophysical and seismometric problems is given. Theoretical estimates and experimental measurements of the level of self-noise in distributed acoustic sensors, including those at subhertz frequencies, are obtained. Numerical modeling has been carried out, which makes it possible to quantify the power of low-frequency noise (associated with a slow temperature change of the probed fiber) in the signal of distributed acoustic sensors. The obtained results are supplemented by theoretical estimates of the power spectrum of a signal from a distant earthquake; they demonstrate the importance of taking into account temperature effects in the fiber when planning experiments related to the registration of weak seismic events.