Institute: The Institute of Mathematical Sciences
Title: Senior Professor
Country/Region: India
Period: 2016/4/7 - 2016/5/16
Theme: Physics of nucleation and its relevance to statistical seismology: a model study
Host: Takahiro HATANO
Introduction: Earthquake and fracture have many things in common. Both of these phenomena show avalanche behaviour with respect to the applied stress. In earthquake, these avalanches give rise to Gutenberg-Richter (GR) law. The time interval of the aftershocks shows Omori law. There are many statistical mechanical models which people have studied in order to understand the origin of GR and Omori laws. Recently we have studied a variant version of Burridge Knopoff model in earthquake, called the train model, where the velocity dependent frictional force is replaced by random pinning forces [European Physics Journal B, volume 86, page 388, (2013)]. The earthquake problem in this model was mapped to the problem of Edwards-Wilkinson interface dragged along by the two sides through a disordered medium. Fiber bundle model [Reviews of Modern Physics, volume. 82, 499 (2010) ] has been proved to be a very simple model of fracture which shows various features those are seen in the experiments on fracture. Since earthquake is considered to be a fracture at geological length a day time scales, it is natural to ask if a variant of fiber bundle model can act as a model for earthquake. With Prof. Takahiro Hatano at the Earthquake Research Institute, we study a variant of fiber bundle model where a fiber after breaking can again get sintered with a probability. The model is similar to the train model and we intend to study the problem of earthquake in this model.