A statistical analysis of earthquake energies and waiting times

Abstract

The statistics of earthquake energies, E, and waiting times between consecutive seismic events, δ, are analysed. The Maximum Likelihood method is used for the estimation of the parameters of probability densities for two models: a power-law model for energies and a doublepower law model for waiting times. The studied data corresponds to earthquakes catalogues in the California-Nevada and Japan regions. The obtained results are in agreement with the Gutenberg-Richter law and the existence of the well-known Omori correlations.