A Multiscaling Fingerprint of Earthquake Diffusion in Seismic Swarms
Abstract
Seismic swarms are commonly associated with fluid migration and other transient processes, yet their spatial migration remains difficult to quantify using conventional diffusion models. Here we analyze ten persistent earthquake swarms identified within the relocated Southern California earthquake catalogue using a consensus clustering approach. We characterize their migration through the multiscaling spectrum (q) obtained from the temporal evolution of the moments of interevent distances. All analyzed swarms exhibit a common scaling signature: the spectrum is approximately linear for negative moments but departs systematically from a single linear behavior for positive moments, indicating that small and large interevent distances evolve with different effective scaling laws. In contrast, the Landers tectonic sequence displays a high-order saturation of (q), consistent with spatially bounded diffusion. These results reveal that earthquake swarms are characterized by strong anomalous diffusion and suggest that the multiscaling spectrum provides a quantitative fingerprint capable of distinguishing swarm migration from conventional tectonic earthquake sequences.
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