Slow earthquakes represent an important conundrum in earthquake physics. While regular earthquakes are catastrophic events with rupture velocities governed by elastic wave speed, the processes that underlie slow fault slip phenomena, including recent discoveries of tremor, slow-slip and low-frequency earthquakes, are less understood. Theoretical models and sparse laboratory observations have pr...

Observations of recent earthquake surface ruptures show that ground deformations include a localized component occurring on faults, and an off-fault affecting the surrounding medium. This second is also referred to as deformation (OFD). The generally occurs complex networks faults connect at depth onto unique fault plane, whereas OFD consists distributed fracturing diffuse bulk volume, over sca...

[1] We examine the radiated waves emitted by events on a model fault. The model deterministically produces a complex sequence of events, with a wide range of sizes, from a uniform frictional instability. The spontaneous rupture events emit a rich spectrum of radiated waves as they nucleate, propagate, and decelerate within the complex stress field left by previous events. Two model innovations,...

The evolution of shear rupture fronts in laboratory earthquakes is analysed with the corresponding functional networks, constructed over acoustic emission friction-patterns. We show that the mesoscopic characteristics of functional networks carry the characteristic time for each phase of the rupture evolution. The classified rupture fronts in network states–obtained from a saw-cut fault and nat...

The southernmost ∼100 km of the San Andreas fault has not ruptured historically. It is imperative to determine its rupture history to better predict its future behavior. This paleoseismic investigation in Coachella, California, establishes a chronology of at least five and up to seven major earthquakes during the past ∼1100 yr. This chronology yields a range of average recurrence intervals betw...

As preparation for this Dahlem Workshop on The Dynamics of Fault Zones, specifically on the subtopic “Rheology of Fault Rocks and Their Surroundings,” we addressed critical research issues for understanding the seismic response of fault zones in terms of the constitutive response of fault materials. This requires new concepts and a host of new observations and experiments to document material r...

An earthquake of M, = 5.3 occurred at 32°58.7'N, 117°51.5'W southwest of Oceanside in San Diego County at 13:47 13 July 1986 (UT). This main shock was followed by an extensive aftershock sequence, with 55 events of ML > 3.0 during July 1986. The epicenters of the main shock and aftershocks are located at the northern end of the San Diego Trough-Bahia Soledad fault zone (SDT-BS) where it changes...

The ground motion and damage caused by the 2015 Gorkha, Nepal earthquake can be characterized by their widespread distributions to the east. Evidence from strong ground motions, regional acceleration duration, and teleseismic waveforms indicate that rupture directivity contributed significantly to these distributions. This phenomenon has been thought to occur only if a strike-slip or dip-slip r...