March 2020 Meeting of the German Geophysical Society, Munich

Munich Geophysics is organizing the DGG Meeting March 22-26, 2020. One of the featured topics is the role of observatories and new instrumentation.

February 2020 10th Skience Winter School, Sudelfeld

The 10th Skience Winter School will be held in Sudelfeld Feb 16-21, 2020 focusing on inverse problems, also including multi-component ground motion observations. More info at Skience.

December 2019 AGU Fall Meeting, San Francisco

Another special session on translation, rotation, and strain is scheduled to take place at the 100th AGU fall Meeting in 2019, Dec 9-13. More info at AGU.

November 2019 Active 6C experiment, Munich

Between 18-22 November 2019 we organize an active experiment to test fibre-optic gyros and other rotation sensors as well as DAS (distributed acoustic sensing) systems in a unique experiment. Rotation and strain sensors will be placed in the vicinity of the ROMY ring laser and combined with a geophone array. As sources we will use a vibrator truck and small explosive sources. F. Bernauer leads the efforts with co-organizers ETH Zürich (A. Fichtner, C. Schmelzbach), BGR Hannover (S. Donner), Univ. Potsdam (E. Eibl), and Univ. Freiberg (S. Buske).

September 2019 IWGoRS Meeting, Taiwan

In 2019 the International Working Group on Rotational Seismology will meet for their 5th workshop in Sun Moon Lake, Taiwan, September . The workshop is c-organized with the Academia Sinica at Taipei.

September 2019 Invited Talks in Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka

J. Wassermann and H. Igel are both invited to give talks at a volcano seismology Meeting organized by Prof. N. Shapiro (IPG Paris) in Petropavlovsk September 9-10, 2019, followed by a 3 day field trip to the volcanic area.

April 2019 ROMY at EGU 2019

Again, there will be several presentations from members of the ROMY group at the General Assembly of the EGU 7-12 April 2019 in Vienna.

February 2019 Munich Winter School „Skience“ on Machine Learning

For the first time a training school will focus on Machine Learning in geophysics. The workshop is organized with the group of ETH Zurich (Lion Krischer). More information can be found here.

June 2018 Conference on Mathematical Geophysics

International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics 32nd IUGG Conference on Mathematical Geophysics Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, June 23-28, 2018, with special session on computational seismology organized by H. Igel and A. Ferreira, more details here.

April 2018 ROMY at EGU 2018

Again, there will be several presentations from members of the ROMY group at the General Assembly of the EGU 8-13 April in Vienna. Here is an overview.

Orals - Tue, 10 Apr, 13:30-17:00 Room 2.47
Progress in Sagnac Interferometry Karl Ulrich Schreiber, Heiner Igel, Joachim Wassermann, Andrea Simonelli, André Gebauer, Jan Kodet, and Jon-Paul Wells, 13:30
The 6C measurement - laboratory experiments and engineering applications Felix Bernauer, Joachim Wassermann, Frederic Guattari, Elliot de Toldi, Klaus G. Hinzen, and Heiner Igel, 14:45
Comparison of direct rotational-motion measurements and array-derived rotations during a 3D seismic-exploration campaign - the Rot3D experiment Cedric Schmelzbach, Mauro Häusler, Heiner Igel, Frédéric Guattari, Joachim Wassermann, David Sollberger, Cédéric Van Renterghem, Alexandre Bigueur, and Johan Robertsson, 15:30

Poster - Tue, 10 Apr, 17:30-19:00, Hall X2
Performance and capability of the large 4C ring laser: ROMY André Gebauer, Ulrich Schreiber, Heiner Igel, Stefanie Schwarz, Stefanie Donner, Céline Hadziioannou, Felix Bernauer, Sven Egdorf, Joachim Wassermann, and Andrea Simonelli, X2.461
Analysis of multi-site and multi-components earthquake-generated rotational ground motion: from tele-seismic to local distances Andreino Simonelli, Ulrich Schreiber, Heiner Igel, Joachim Wassermann, Andrè Gebauer, Felix Bernauer, Angela Di Virgilio, Jacopo Belfi, and Nicolò Beverini, X2.464


March 2018 Mini-workshop in Rotational Seismology at INGV Rome

A Mini-workshop on Rotational Seismology is being held at INGV Rome on March 16. Heiner Igel, Joachim Wassermann, and Ulrich Schreiber will present on recent progress of ring lasers and portable rotation sensors. This is complemented by presentations by ROMY collaborators in PISA as well as the PISA group working on seismic decoupling of gravitational wave detectors. Presentations are on youtube.

March 2018 Munich Winter School „Skience“ on 6C data analysis

For the first time a training school will focus on the analysis of 6C ground motions. The workshop is organized with the group of ETH Zurich (Prof J. Robertsson and C. Schmelzbach). More information can be found here.

December 2017 Special session at AGU

At the AGU in New Orleans from 11-15 December we offer a special session on GRound translation, strain, rotation: Using Wavefield Gradients for Seismic Applications (Session ID: 23314). Note that abstract submission is already open. Deadline is August 2, 2017. In total, the Romy group presents 11 contribution within this and other sessions.

Session Description:
Substantial recent progress in seismic instrumentation and array technology has opened new roads in using wavefield gradients, strain, and rotation for several seismic applications. Collocated recordings of translation, strain, and rotation provide access to subsurface velocity information, improve the resolution of source inverse problems, help separating seismic phases, and provide information on propagation directions. In addition – due to the sensitivity of classic broadband seismometers to tilt – high quality measurements of ground rotations can remove the ambiguities of horizontal ground motion measurements for example for ocean-bottom recordings or recordings of long-period signals on volcanoes. In this session we invite papers on new developments of seismic instrumentation to access gradient information (e.g., rotation sensors), small scale array measurements and analysis, and applications such as imaging, source inversion, wavefield reconstruction, instrument correction, single station observations in planetary seismology and theoretical developments.
Primary Convener: Heiner Igel, Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, Munich, Germany
Conveners: Cedric Schmelzbach, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, Nori Nakata, University of Oklahoma Norman Campus, Norman, OK, United States and Bor-Shouh Huang, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan


July 2017 Official Romy inauguration

The ROMY ring laser – already featured by a news article in Science (“Lord of the Rings”, Science, Vol. 356, Issue 6335, pp. 236-238, 2017) – will officially be inaugurated on July 21, 2017, in a ceremony to be held at the Monastery Fürstenfeldbruck (“kleiner Saal”) from 11 am. Guest lecturer will be Prof. Dr. Harald Schuh (GFZ Potsdam) speaking about “New roads in modern geodesy”. The presentations will be in German. An invitation can be found here. The event is open to the public! In the afternoon there will be an occasion to visit the ring laser structure at the Geophysical Observatory Fürstenfeldbruck, Ludwigshöhe 8.

April 2017 Romy at EGU

Again, there will be a special session on New developments in seismic and geodetic instrumentation (SM 5.2) at the EGU General Assembly from 23 to 28 April in Vienna. In addition, the members of the Romy group have submitted several contributions related to the ROMY project:

  • Schreiber et al. - Integration and initial operation of the multi-component large ring laser structure ROMY (EGU 2017-5628)
  • Gebauer et al. - Design and construction of a large 4C ring laser: ROMY (EGU2 017-10170)
  • Bernauer et al. - BlueSeis3A - full characterization of a 3C broadband rotational ground motion sensor for seismology (EGU 2017-15512)
  • Donner et al. - Inversion for seismic moment tensors from 6-component waveform data (EGU 2017-3509)
  • Chow et al. - The development of a rotational magnitude scale (EGU 2017-4064)
  • Joshi et al. - The case for 6-component ground motion observations in planetary seismology (EGU 2017-3840)

We kindly invite you to meet us there.

March 2017 Romy at DGG

At the General Assembly of the Deutsche Geophysikalische Gesellschaft from 27 to 30 March in Potsdam, we will present some preliminary results from the ROMY project. We kindly invite you to meet us there.

  • Gebauer et al. - ROMY: Ein 3D Rotationssensor für Geophysik und Geodäsie (Session S1, A-482)
  • Donner et al. - Inversion for moment tensors including rotational ground motion: the possibility of a single station approach (Session S1, A-184)
  • Donner et al. - Earthquake location including rotational ground motion: a single station approach (Session S1, A-185, poster)

June 2016 IWGoRS Meeting, Germany

In 2016 the International Working Group on Rotational Seismology will meet. Registration for the 3-day meeting is now open. The 4th IWGoRS workshop will be held at the Evangelische Akademie Tutzing (near Munich, Germany), June 20-23, 2016. The workshop will focus on any aspect of rotational ground motion including the recording of rotations, instrumentation, earthquake sources, non-standard rheologies, inverse problems, geodesy, earthquake engineering, long-period seismology, array-derived rotation, noise-correlation studies, ring laser technology, Earth's rotation, problems of fundamental physics and others. The meeting is co-funded by the ERC project ROMY.

April 2016 Special session at EGU

At the General Assembly from 17 to 22 April in Vienna, we organise a special session on New developments in seismic and geodetic instrumentation (SM 7.2/G 6.2). We kindly invite you to meet us there.

June/July 2015 IUGG General Assembly, Prague

On the 26th General Assembly of IUGG this year in Prague, there will be a special session on Rotational Seismologie: "S06e Strong Ground Motion: Rotational Seismology". Contributions will be on any aspects of direct or indirect (array-based) measurements, interpretation, or theoretical aspects of rotational ground motions, and progress in rotation sensor development.

September 2014 Workshop: The Earth's Hum

The Earth continuously hums a tune, at very low frequencies, audible only to sensitive geophysical instruments. The development and installation of a novel rotational sensor, currently underway at the LMU, will allow us to more closely study the toroidal modes which contribute to the Earth's Hum. Within the scope of the visit of Prof. Toshiro Tanimoto a workshop centered around the Earth's Hum will take place on 12th September 2014 in the building of the Center for Advanced Studies (CAS) in Munich. Further information can be found here.