Scale-free statistics of time interval between successive earthquakes
Other Condensed Matter
2009-11-10 v1
Abstract
The statistical property of the calm times, i.e., time intervals between successive earthquakes with arbitrary values of magnitude, is studied by analyzing the seismic time series data in California and Japan. It is found that the calm times obey the Zipf-Mandelbrot power law, exhibiting a new scale-free nature of the earthquake phenomenon. Dependence of the exponent of the power-law distribution on threshold for magnitude is examined. As threshold increases, the tail of the distribution tends to become longer, showing difficulty in statistically estimating time intervals of earthquakes.
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0410123,
title = {Scale-free statistics of time interval between successive earthquakes},
author = {Sumiyoshi Abe and Norikazu Suzuki},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0410123},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
18 pages, 3 figures