Critical slip distance on rough faults

Abstract

The critical slip distance $D_c$ - the characteristic displacement over which a fault dynamically weakens from peak to residual strength - is a key parameter in earthquake rupture dynamics, controlling the nucleation process and slip evolution. Nevertheless, its physical origin and scaling remain debated: Dc is observed to span from micrometers in lab experiments to meters on natural faults, a scaling which cannot be explained within the standard friction framework, which interprets Dc as a material constant related to the contact population and provides no mechanism linking it to fault structure or event size. Here, we propose a first-principles derivation showing that Dc is a structural property of faults, governed by their self-affine roughness belonging to the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang universality class. We further demonstrate that rate-and-state friction emerges as the mean-field limit of the underlying fractal asperity dynamics and provide analytical formulas for its parameters: the state variable represents the population-averaged contact age, while the critical distance identifies the geometric unlocking of the dominant pinning bumps. Rate-and-state friction is therefore an emergent phenomenology whose mathematical form reflects the statistical mechanics of the underlying contact population, and its parameter values are strictly scale-dependent. This allows us to better characterize fault stability from a multiscale perspective; hence, we introduce a new concept named "fault retentivity'': the ability of a fault to arrest a nucleated rupture before it degenerates into run-away via the multiscale barrier population encoded in the fault structure. Retentivity determines whether a fault hosts only small earthquakes or can occasionally nucleate large ones. The key implication is that assessing fault stability requires to understand the hierarchical architecture of the fault system.