Productivity within the ETAS seismicity model

Abstract

The productivity of a magnitude $m$ event can be characterized in term of triggered events of magnitude above $m-\Delta$: it is the number of direct "descendants" $\nu_\Delta$ and the number of all "descendants" $V_\Delta$. There is evidence in favour of the discrete exponential distribution for both $\nu_\Delta$ and $V_\Delta$ with a dominant magnitude $m$ (the case of aftershock cluster). We consider the general Epidemic Type Aftershock Sequence (ETAS) model adapted to any distribution of $\nu_\Delta$. It turns out that the branching structure of the model excludes the possibility of having exponential distributions for both productivity characteristics at once. We have analytically investigated the features of the $V_\Delta$ distribution within a wide class of ETAS models. We show the fundamental difference in tail behavior of the $V_\Delta$-distributions for general-type clusters and clusters with a dominant initial magnitude: the tail is heavy in the former case and light in the latter. The real data demonstrate the possibilities of this kind. This result provides theoretical and practical constraints for distributional analysis of $V_\Delta$.