Nonlinear Network Dynamics on Earthquake Fault Systems

Earthquake faults occur in networks that have dynamical modes not displayed by single isolated faults. Using simulations of the network of strike-slip faults in southern California, we find that the physics depends critically on both the interactions among the faults, which are determined by the geometry of the fault network, as well as on the stress dissipation properties of the nonlinear frictional physics, similar to the dynamics of integrate-and-fire neural networks.