Fault interactions & slip synchronization
Collaborators: Emily Brodsky (UCSC),
Kelian Dascher-Cousineau (USU),
Alba Rodriguez-Padilla (USU),
Aitaro Kato (ERI)
Associated publications:
Brodsky & Farge (2026),
Farge & Brodsky (2025),
Farge et al. (2021, 2023).
In some fault systems, all sub-faults interact so strongly that they reach a synchronization state: they load and fail together, in regular cycles of large ruptures. This state results from a fragile balance between synchronization and perturbation.
Conditions leading to synchronization include potent interactions and high sensitivity to stress changes. They lead to the emergence of collective activity and characteristic time and space scales of activity on the fault (Farge et al, 2021, 2023). Perturbing factors include heterogeneities in fault properties, complex fault geometry, and external perturbations such as from nearby seismicity (Farge & Brodsky, 2025).
I study the synchronization of deep episodic tremor and slip, which displays extraordinary patterns of collective activity, as a way into the more data-poor problem of large earthquake synchronization.