Why earthquakes stop: Growth and arrest in stochastic fields

John Rundle, Eric Preston, Seth McGinnis, W. Klein

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

16 Scopus citations

Abstract

Classical theory predicts that earthquakes growing in a homogeneous stress field should not arrest until the fault boundaries are encountered. However, earthquakes on natural faults, where stresses are heterogeneous, are observed over a wide range of sizes. Here we suggest that heterogeneity should be characterized by the Hausdorff dimension H of the walk associated with a stochastic stress difference field. The critical value for arrest, H = 0.5, corresonds to a Brownian walk through the stress difference field.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)5698-5701
Number of pages4
JournalPhysical Review Letters
Volume80
Issue number25
DOIs
StatePublished - 1998

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