Study of the response to pulses and possible prediction of catastrophes

Abstract

We show in a numerical study of the Burridge-Knopoff spring-block model of earthquake, that if one applies very weak pulses (fixed amount of momentum) to any particular block at regular intervals and studies the response on the same block (the stress developed on it), then accurate predictions of the timings of the imminent earthquakes are possible. This is shown by studying the (local) pulse susceptibility X_P, which grows exponentially with the inverse of the time interval from the next (global) earthquake and saturates to a (nonuniversal) value dependent on the model parameters (fixed for any particular series of earthquakes).