  Systematic characterization of slip behaviours on active faults is key to
unraveling the physics of tectonic faulting and the interplay between slow and
fast earthquakes. Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR), by enabling
measurement of ground deformation at a global scale every few days, may hold
the key to those interactions. However, atmospheric propagation delays often
exceed ground deformation of interest despite state-of-the art processing, and
thus InSAR analysis requires expert interpretation and a priori knowledge of
fault systems, precluding global investigations of deformation dynamics. Here
we show that a deep auto-encoder architecture tailored to untangle ground
deformation from noise in InSAR time series autonomously extracts deformation
signals, without prior knowledge of a fault's location or slip behaviour.
Applied to InSAR data over the North Anatolian Fault, our method reaches 2 mm
detection, revealing a slow earthquake twice as extensive as previously
recognized. We further explore the generalization of our approach to
inflation/deflation-induced deformation, applying the same methodology to the
geothermal field of Coso, California.
