# Interevent time distributions of avalanche dynamics

## TL;DR

This paper investigates the interevent time distributions of avalanches in stick-slip systems, revealing their ability to distinguish different mechanical states and indicating large correlations, unlike size and duration distributions.

## Contribution

It demonstrates that interevent time distributions can differentiate system states and reveal correlations, providing new insights beyond traditional avalanche size and duration analyses.

## Key findings

- Interevent time distributions vary with system state.
- Large packing ratios show earthquake-like interevent times.
- Interevent times reveal correlations not seen in size/duration.

## Abstract

Physical systems characterized by stick-slip dynamics often display avalanches. Regardless of the diversity of their microscopic structure, these systems are governed by a power-law distribution of avalanche size and duration. Here we focus on the interevent times between avalanches and show that, unlike their distributions of size and duration, the interevent time distributions are able to distinguish different mechanical states of the system, characterized by different volume fractions or confining pressures. We use experiments on granular systems and numerical simulations of emulsions to show that systems having the same probability distribution for avalanche size and duration can have different interevent time distributions. Remarkably, for large packing ratios, these interevent time distributions look similar to those for earthquakes and are indirect evidence of large space-time correlations in the system. Our results therefore indicate that interevent time statistics are more informative to characterize the dynamics of avalanches.