Statistical physics of fracture, friction, and earthquakes

Abstract

The present status of research and understanding regarding the dynamics and the statistical properties of earthquakes is reviewed, mainly from a statistical physical viewpoint. Emphasis is put both on the physics of friction and fracture, which provides a microscopic basis for our understanding of an earthquake instability, and on the statistical physical modelling of earthquakes, which provides macroscopic aspects of such phenomena. Recent numerical results from several representative models are reviewed, with attention to both their critical and their characteristic properties. Some of the relevant notions and related issues are highlighted, including the origin of power laws often observed in statistical properties of earthquakes, apparently contrasting features of characteristic earthquakes or asperities, the nature of precursory phenomena and nucleation processes, and the origin of slow earthquakes, etc.