Universality in solar flare and earthquake occurrence

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that solar flares and earthquakes share universal statistical properties, including size distributions and temporal clustering, implying a common underlying physical mechanism.

Contribution

It reveals universal statistical features in solar flares and earthquakes, suggesting a shared physical origin and providing a new perspective for understanding these phenomena.

Findings

Same size distributions in both phenomena

Identical inter-occurrence time distributions

Power law temporal correlations (Omori law)

Abstract

Earthquakes and solar flares are phenomena involving huge and rapid releases of energy characterized by complex temporal occurrence. By analysing available experimental catalogs, we show that the stochastic processes underlying these apparently different phenomena have universal properties. Namely both problems exhibit the same distributions of sizes, inter-occurrence times and the same temporal clustering: we find afterflare sequences with power law temporal correlations as the Omori law for seismic sequences. The observed universality suggests a common approach to the interpretation of both phenomena in terms of the same driving physical mechanism.