TY  - JOUR
AU  - Brener, Efim A.
AU  - Aldam, Michael
AU  - Barras, Fabian
AU  - Molinari, Jean-François
AU  - Bouchbinder, Eran
TI  - Unstable Slip Pulses and Earthquake Nucleation as a Nonequilibrium First-Order Phase Transition
JO  - Physical review letters
VL  - 121
IS  - 23
SN  - 1079-7114
CY  - College Park, Md.
PB  - APS
M1  - FZJ-2019-00454
SP  - 234302
PY  - 2018
AB  - The onset of rapid slip along initially quiescent frictional interfaces, the process of “earthquake nucleation,” and dissipative spatiotemporal slippage dynamics play important roles in a broad range of physical systems. Here we first show that interfaces described by generic friction laws feature stress-dependent steady-state slip pulse solutions, which are unstable in the quasi-1D approximation of thin elastic bodies. We propose that such unstable slip pulses of linear size L∗ and characteristic amplitude are “critical nuclei” for rapid slip in a nonequilibrium analogy to equilibrium first-order phase transitions and quantitatively support this idea by dynamical calculations. We then perform 2D numerical calculations that indicate that the nucleation length L∗ exists also in 2D and that the existence of a fracture mechanics Griffith-like length LG<L∗ gives rise to a richer phase diagram that features also sustained slip pulses.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
C6  - pmid:30576171
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000452683000010
DO  - DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.234302
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/859605
ER  -