The recent surge of large earthquakes and the improvements on the observational techniques and numerical approaches provide a great opportunity to push forward our understandings on the rupture process of large earthquakes. However, today’s observational approaches are not necessarily well posed to validate physical models. For instance, mechanisms that affect the source, the pre-stress heterogeneity (A), fault geometry (B), frictional weakening mechanisms (C), and medium inelastic response (D) all greatly affect the dynamic evolution of the rupture but their effect on resulting seismic waves are not documented.
In order to bridge seismic observations with earthquake physics, we need to tackle both sides simultaneously: to develop new observational techniques and metrics that are directly relevant to physical models of the source and lab experiments. This is the main topic of my study. Specifically, the research interests of mine inclues:
- Observational methods to study earthquake source
- Spatial and temporal evolution of earthquake rupture
- Kinematic and dynamic modeling of earthquake rupture
- Dynamic features in the earthquake source time functions
- Bridge between source observations and source dynamics