Universal mean moment rate profiles of earthquake ruptures

TL;DR

This paper develops universal scaling functions for earthquake rupture moment-rate profiles based on a heterogeneous fault model with long-range stress transfer, revealing insights into earthquake dynamics and connections to other avalanche systems.

Contribution

It introduces two universal scaling functions for earthquake moment-rate profiles, providing a stronger test of earthquake models against observations than scaling exponents alone.

Findings

Good agreement between theory and observations for earthquake profiles.

Potential discrepancy in one universal scaling function for moment-rates.

Connections established between earthquake physics and other avalanche phenomena.

Abstract

Earthquake phenomenology exhibits a number of power law distributions including the Gutenberg-Richter frequency-size statistics and the Omori law for aftershock decay rates. In search for a basic model that renders correct predictions on long spatio-temporal scales, we discuss results associated with a heterogeneous fault with long range stress-transfer interactions. To better understand earthquake dynamics we focus on faults with Gutenberg-Richter like earthquake statistics and develop two universal scaling functions as a stronger test of the theory against observations than mere scaling exponents that have large error bars. Universal shape profiles contain crucial information on the underlying dynamics in a variety of systems. As in magnetic systems, we find that our analysis for earthquakes provides a good overall agreement between theory and observations, but with a potential discrepancy in one particular universal scaling function for moment-rates. The results reveal interesting connections between the physics of vastly different systems with avalanche noise.