Dynamic earthquake rupture in the lower crust.

Earthquakes in the continental crust commonly occur in the upper 15 to 20 km. Recent studies demonstrate that earthquakes also occur in the lower crust of collision zones and play a key role in metamorphic processes that modify its physical properties. However, details of the failure process and sequence of events that lead to seismic slip in the lower crust remain uncertain.

Volumetric and shear processes in crystalline rock approaching faulting.

Understanding the approach to faulting in continental rocks is critical for identifying processes leading to fracturing in geomaterials and the preparation process of large earthquakes. In situ dynamic X-ray imaging and digital volume correlation analysis of a crystalline rock core, under a constant confining pressure of 25 MPa, are used to elucidate the initiation, growth, and coalescence of microfractures leading to macroscopic failure as the axial compressive stress is increased. Following an initial elastic deformation, microfractures develop in the solid, and with increasing differential stress, the damage pervades the rock volume.

Earthquake-induced transformation of the lower crust.

The structural and metamorphic evolution of the lower crust has direct effects on the lithospheric response to plate tectonic processes involved in orogeny, including subsidence of sedimentary basins, stability of deep mountain roots and extension of high-topography regions. Recent research shows that before orogeny most of the lower crust is dry, impermeable and mechanically strong . During an orogenic event, the evolution of the lower crust is controlled by infiltration of fluids along localized shear or fracture zones.

Abundant off-fault seismicity and orthogonal structures in the San Jacinto fault zone.

The trifurcation area of the San Jacinto fault zone has produced more than 10% of all earthquakes in southern California since 2000, including the June 2016 (moment magnitude) 5.2 Borrego Springs earthquake. In this area, the fault splits into three subparallel strands and is associated with broad / anomalies.

Probabilistic model of waiting times between large failures in sheared media.

Using a probabilistic approximation of a mean-field mechanistic model of sheared systems, we analytically calculate the statistical properties of large failures under slow shear loading. For general shear F(t), the distribution of waiting times between large system-spanning failures is a generalized exponential distribution, ρ_{T}(t)=λ(F(t))P(F(t))exp[-∫_{0}^{t}dτλ(F(τ))P(F(τ))], where λ(F(t)) is the rate of small event occurrences at stress F(t) and P(F(t)) is the probability that a small event triggers a large failure. We study the behavior of this distribution as a function of fault properties, such as heterogeneity or shear rate.

Probing failure susceptibilities of earthquake faults using small-quake tidal correlations.

Mitigating the devastating economic and humanitarian impact of large earthquakes requires signals for forecasting seismic events. Daily tide stresses were previously thought to be insufficient for use as such a signal. Recently, however, they have been found to correlate significantly with small earthquakes, just before large earthquakes occur.

ExPlanes: exploring planes in triplet data.

Many methods for the analysis of gene expression-, protein- or metabolite-data focus on the investigation of binary relationships, while the underlying biological processes creating this data may generate relations of higher than bivariate complexity. We give a novel method ExPlanes that helps to explore certain types of ternary relationships in a statistically robust, Bayesian framework. To arrive at an characterization of the data structure contained in triplet data we investigate 2-dimensional planes being the only linear structures that cannot be inferred from projections of the data.

Micromechanical model for deformation in solids with universal predictions for stress-strain curves and slip avalanches.

A basic micromechanical model for deformation of solids with only one tuning parameter (weakening epsilon) is introduced. The model can reproduce observed stress-strain curves, acoustic emissions and related power spectra, event statistics, and geometrical properties of slip, with a continuous phase transition from brittle to ductile behavior. Exact universal predictions are extracted using mean field theory and renormalization group tools.

Universal mean moment rate profiles of earthquake ruptures.

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 spatiotemporal 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.