Statistical Physics of Fracture, Friction and Earthquake

TL;DR

This paper reviews the statistical physical understanding of earthquakes, focusing on friction, fracture, and modeling, highlighting recent numerical results and phenomena like power-laws, asperities, and slow earthquakes.

Contribution

It synthesizes recent advances in statistical physics models of earthquakes, connecting microscopic friction and fracture physics with macroscopic earthquake statistics.

Findings

Power-law distributions in earthquake statistics

Contrasting features of characteristic earthquakes and asperities

Insights into slow earthquake phenomena

Abstract

We review the present status of our research and understanding regarding the dynamics and the statistical properties of earthquakes, mainly from a statistical physical viewpoint. Emphasis is put both on the physics of friction and fracture, which provides a "microscopic" basis of our understanding of an earthquake instability, and on the statistical physical modelling of earthquakes, which provides "macroscopic" aspects of such phenomena. Recent numerical results on several representative models are reviewed, with attention to both their "critical" and "characteristic" properties. We highlight some of relevant notions and related issues, including the origin of power-laws often observed in statistical properties of earthquakes, apparently contrasting features of characteristic earthquakes or asperities, the nature of precursory phenomena and nucleation processes, the origin of slow earthquakes, etc.