Thermally activated static friction explains earthquakes interactions

Abstract Unlike e.g. meteorological hazards, tectonic earthquakes remain hardly predictable, reinforcing their deadly character. This is related to a strong time asymmetry, with few and nonsystematic foreshocks sometimes preceding large earthquakes, while aftershocks are ubiquitous and have been known for a long time. However, 130 years after Omori, the physical origin of this time asymmetry and of aftershocks remains highly debated. Slider-blocks models have been proposed to explain earthquakes physics and statistics. If these models can reproduce a Gutenberg-Richer distribution of slip magnitudes, they are unable to simulate aftershocks and time asymmetry except if introducing viscous relaxation in a deterministic way. Here, we model earthquake interactions and natural seismicity from a minimal number of fundamental mechanisms, namely elastic stress transfer and reaction rate theory applied to the simplest form of static friction. This allows introducing temperature in a physically meaningful way, and to strikingly reproduce many aspects of seismicity and earthquake interactions, including time asymmetry.