Avalanches on the Complex Network of Rigan Earthquake, Virtual Seismometer Technique, Criticality and Seismic Cycle

TL;DR

This study analyzes the Rigan earthquake network using virtual seismometers, revealing critical avalanche dynamics, cyclic seismic activity, and power-law distributions indicative of a system near criticality.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of virtual seismometer networks to analyze earthquake avalanches and demonstrates the system's critical behavior and cyclic seismic patterns.

Findings

Seismic activity exhibits cyclic, intermittent behavior.

The earthquake network follows a power-law degree distribution with exponent 2.3.

Avalanche sizes follow a power-law distribution with exponent 1.45.

Abstract

We base our study on the statistical analysis of the Rigan earthquake 2010 December 20, which consists of estimating the earthquake network by means of virtual seismometer technique, and also considering the avalanche-type dynamics on top of this complex network.The virtual seismometer complex network shows power-law degree distribution with the exponent $\gamma=2.3\pm 0.2$. Our findings show that the seismic activity is strongly intermittent, and have a \textit{cyclic shape} as is seen in the natural situations, which is main finding of this study. The branching ratio inside and between avalanches reveal that the system is at (or more precisely close to) the critical point with power-law behavior for the distribution function of the size and the mass and the duration of the avalanches, and with some scaling relations between these quantities. The critical exponent of the size of avalanches is $\tau_S=1.45\pm 0.02$. We find a considerable correlation between the dynamical Green function and the nodes centralities.