Extracting correlations in earthquake time series using visibility graph analysis

Abstract

Recent observation studies have revealed that earthquakes are classified into several different categories. Each category might be characterized by the unique statistical feature in the time series, but the present understanding is still limited due to their nonlinear and nonstationary nature. Here we utilize complex network theory to shed new light on the statistical properties of earthquake time series. We investigate two kinds of time series, which are magnitude and inter-event time (IET), for three different categories of earthquakes: regular earthquakes, earthquake swarms, and tectonic tremors. Following the criterion of visibility graph, earthquake time series are mapped into a complex network by considering each seismic event as a node and determining the links. As opposed to the current common belief, it is found that the magnitude time series are not statistically equivalent to random time series. The IET series exhibit correlations similar to fractional Brownian motion for all the categories of earthquakes. Furthermore, we show that the time series of three different categories of earthquakes can be distinguished by the topology of the associated visibility graph. Analysis on the assortativity coefficient also reveals that the swarms are more intermittent than the tremors.