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UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST
FACULTY OF PHYSICS Guest
2024-11-22 2:03 |
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Conference: Bucharest University Faculty of Physics 2005 Meeting
Section: Atmosphere and Earth Science; Environment Protection
Title:
A Critical-Point Theory of the Earthquakes
Authors:
B.F. Apostol and C. Cioflan
Affiliation:
National Institute for Earth Physics, Bucharest, Romania
E-mail
Keywords:
Abstract:
The scaling hypothesis underlying the theory of the critical point is briefly presented, and its application to earthquakes is outlined. The relevance of the “self-organized criticality” is emphasized for the critical behavior of the probabilistic seismic events.
As it is known, the phase transitions are understood by means of the so-called theory of the critical point. This theory has two ingredients: the renormalization group and the scaling hypothesis. The former gives critical exponents (at least in principle), as based on the general statistical principles of the phase transitions; this part has limited applicability to earthquakes, as long as the adequacy of such general principles to earthquakes is not yet fully known. The latter part however, the scaling hypothesis that underlines the phase transitions, is sufficiently general as to make it a reasonable hypothesis for the critical behavior of a very large class of complex systems, earthquakes included.
The “self-organized criticality” of the new phase occurring at the critical point suggests a general scaling theory.
The present critical-point theory for the seismic events suggests the existence of the high intensity precursor seismic activity before the strong main earthquake. The quantitative evaluations obtained using this theory are affected by appreciable errors, caused by the divergent behavior in the critical-point vicinity of the relevant parameters. However, such theory indicated the need for the careful seismic monitoring of the precursor behavior, which may deliver interesting qualitative information.
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