Long-Term Clustering, Scaling, and Universality in the Temporal Occurrence of Earthquakes

Scaling analysis reveals striking regularities in earthquake occurrence. The time between any one earthquake and that following it is random, but it is described by the same universal-probability distribution for any spatial region and magnitude range considered. When time is expressed in rescaled units, set by the averaged seismic activity, the self-similar nature of the process becomes apparent. The form of the probability distribution reveals that earthquakes tend to cluster in time, beyond the duration of aftershock sequences. Furthermore, if aftershock sequences are analysed in an analogous way, yet taking into account the fact that seismic activity is not constant but decays in time, the same universal distribution is found for the rescaled time between events.Comment: short paper, only 2 figure

A critical-density closed Universe in Brans-Dicke theory

In a Brans-Dicke (BD) cosmological model, the energy density associated with some scalar field decreases as \displaystyle a^{{-2}(\frac{\omega_{o}+ {\frac12}%}{\omega_{o}+1})} with the scale factor $a(t)$ of the Universe, giving a matter with an Equation of state $\displaystyle p=-{1/3}(\frac{2+\omega_{o}}{1+\omega_{o}}) \rho$. In this model, the Universe could be closed but still have a nonrelativistic-matter density corresponding to its critical value, $\Omega_{o}=1$. Different cosmological expressions, such as, luminosity distance, angular diameter, number count and ratio of the redshift tickness-angular size, are determined in terms of the redshift for this model.Comment: To appear in MNRAS, 7 pages, 5 eps figure

Matter-gravity couplings and Lorentz violation

The gravitational couplings of matter are studied in the presence of Lorentz and CPT violation. At leading order in the coefficients for Lorentz violation, the relativistic quantum hamiltonian is derived from the gravitationally coupled minimal Standard-Model Extension. For spin-independent effects, the nonrelativistic quantum hamiltonian and the classical dynamics for test and source bodies are obtained. A systematic perturbative method is developed to treat small metric and coefficient fluctuations about a Lorentz-violating and Minkowski background. The post-newtonian metric and the trajectory of a test body freely falling under gravity in the presence of Lorentz violation are established. An illustrative example is presented for a bumblebee model. The general methodology is used to identify observable signals of Lorentz and CPT violation in a variety of gravitational experiments and observations, including gravimeter measurements, laboratory and satellite tests of the weak equivalence principle, antimatter studies, solar-system observations, and investigations of the gravitational properties of light. Numerous sensitivities to coefficients for Lorentz violation can be achieved in existing or near-future experiments at the level of parts in 10^3 down to parts in 10^{15}. Certain coefficients are uniquely detectable in gravitational searches and remain unmeasured to date.Comment: 59 pages two-column REVTe

Universality in solar flare and earthquake occurrence

Earthquakes and solar flares are phenomena involving huge and rapid releases of energy characterized by complex temporal occurrence. By analysing available experimental catalogs, we show that the stochastic processes underlying these apparently different phenomena have universal properties. Namely both problems exhibit the same distributions of sizes, inter-occurrence times and the same temporal clustering: we find afterflare sequences with power law temporal correlations as the Omori law for seismic sequences. The observed universality suggests a common approach to the interpretation of both phenomena in terms of the same driving physical mechanism

Testing the equivalence principle: why and how?

Part of the theoretical motivation for improving the present level of testing of the equivalence principle is reviewed. The general rationale for optimizing the choice of pairs of materials to be tested is presented. One introduces a simplified rationale based on a trichotomy of competing classes of theoretical models.Comment: 11 pages, Latex, uses ioplppt.sty, submitted to Class. Quantum Gra

The Full-sky Astrometric Mapping Explorer -- Astrometry for the New Millennium

FAME is designed to perform an all-sky, astrometric survey with unprecedented accuracy. It will create a rigid astrometric catalog of 4x10^7 stars with 5 < m_V < 15. For bright stars, 5 < m_V < 9, FAME will determine positions and parallaxes accurate to < 50 microarcseconds, with proper motion errors < 50 microarcseconds/year. For fainter stars, 9 < m_V < 15, FAME will determine positions and parallaxes accurate to < 500 microarcseconds, with proper motion errors < 500 microarcseconds/year. It will also collect photometric data on these 4 x 10^7 stars in four Sloan DSS colors.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, to appear in "Working on the Fringe

Newtonian Limit of Conformal Gravity

We study the weak-field limit of the static spherically symmetric solution of the locally conformally invariant theory advocated in the recent past by Mannheim and Kazanas as an alternative to Einstein's General Relativity. In contrast with the previous works, we consider the physically relevant case where the scalar field that breaks conformal symmetry and generates fermion masses is nonzero. In the physical gauge, in which this scalar field is constant in space-time, the solution reproduces the weak-field limit of the Schwarzschild--(anti)DeSitter solution modified by an additional term that, depending on the sign of the Weyl term in the action, is either oscillatory or exponential as a function of the radial distance. Such behavior reflects the presence of, correspondingly, either a tachion or a massive ghost in the spectrum, which is a serious drawback of the theory under discussion.Comment: 9 pages, comments and references added; the version to be published in Phys. Rev.

Phenomenology of the Equivalence Principle with Light Scalars

Light scalar particles with couplings of sub-gravitational strength, which can generically be called 'dilatons', can produce violations of the equivalence principle. However, in order to understand experimental sensitivities one must know the coupling of these scalars to atomic systems. We report here on a study of the required couplings. We give a general Lagrangian with five independent dilaton parameters and calculate the "dilaton charge" of atomic systems for each of these. Two combinations are particularly important. One is due to the variations in the nuclear binding energy, with a sensitivity scaling with the atomic number as $A^{-1/3}$. The other is due to electromagnetism. We compare limits on the dilaton parameters from existing experiments.Comment: 5 page

Nonlinear theory and tests of earthquake recurrence times

We develop an efficient numerical scheme to solve accurately the set of nonlinear integral equations derived previously in (Saichev and Sornette, 2007), which describes the distribution of inter-event times in the framework of a general model of earthquake clustering with long memory. Detailed comparisons between the linear and nonlinear versions of the theory and direct synthetic catalogs show that the nonlinear theory provides an excellent fit to the synthetic catalogs, while there are significant biases resulting from the use of the linear approximation. We then address the suggestions proposed by some authors to use the empirical distribution of inter-event times to obtain a better determination of the so-called clustering parameter. Our theory and tests against synthetic and empirical catalogs find a rather dramatic lack of power for the distribution of inter-event times to distinguish between quite different sets of parameters, casting doubt on the usefulness of this statistics for the specific purpose of identifying the clustering parameter.Comment: 31 pages including 11 figure