Influence of an environment changing in time on Crucial Events: the earthquake prototype

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the study of the interaction between two distinct forms of non-stationary processes, which we will refer to as non-stationarity of first and second kind. The non-stationarity of first kind is caused by criticality-generated events that we call crucial events. Crucial events signal ergodicity breaking emerging from the interaction between the units of the complex system under study, indicating that the non stationarity of first kind has internal origin. The non-stationarity of second kind is due to the influence on the system of interest of an environment changing in time, thereby implying an external origin. In this paper we show that the non-stationarity of first kind, measured by an inverse power law index {\mu} is characterized by singularities at {\mu} = 2 and {\mu} = 3. We realize the interaction between the non-stationarity of first kind and the non-stationarity of second kind with a model frequently adopted to study earthquakes, namely, a system of mainshocks, assumed to be crucial events, generating a cascade of after-shocks simulating the changing in time environment. We prove that the after-shocks significantly affects the detection of anomalous scaling, with this effect weakening as the value {\mu} approaches {\mu} = 2.5. We argue that this result is a consequence of the fact that the states {\mu} = 2 and {\mu} = 3 are the borders between different statistical regimes, where a sort of phase transition occurs, with {\mu} = 2.5 being a state sufficiently far from both transition regimes. We conclude this paper with the observation that the earthquakes should be interpreted as resulting from the interaction between many geophysical units generating criticality, with the non-stationary events of second kind affecting conveniently short time regions between two consecutive crucial events.