Universal Earthquake-Occurrence Jumps, Correlations with Time, and Anomalous Diffusion

TL;DR

This study reveals universal scaling laws in seismic activity, showing that earthquake jumps follow power-law distributions and are correlated with waiting times, with implications for understanding earthquake diffusion patterns.

Contribution

It uncovers universal seismic scaling behaviors and the relationship between earthquake jumps and waiting times across different regions.

Findings

Jump distributions are magnitude independent with two power-law regimes.

Jumps and waiting times are correlated except for short or long jumps.

Diffusion profiles mirror the jump distribution shape.

Abstract

Spatiotemporal properties of seismicity are investigated for a worldwide (WW) catalog and for Southern California in the stationary case (SC), showing a nearly universal scaling behavior. Distributions of distances between consecutive earthquakes (jumps) are magnitude independent and show two power-law regimes, separated by jump values about 200 km (WW) and 15 km (SC). Distributions of waiting times conditioned to the value of jumps show that both variables are correlated in general, but turn out to be independent when only short or long jumps are considered. Finally, diffusion profiles reflect the shape of the jump distribution.