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Modeling Aftershocks as a Stretched Exponential Relaxation

The decay rate of aftershocks has been modeled as a power law since the pioneering work of Omori in the late nineteenth century. Considered the second most fundamental empirical law after the Gutenberg-Richter relationship, the power law paradigm has rarely been challenged by the seismological community. By taking a view of aftershock research not biased by prior conceptions of Omori power law decay and by applying statistical methods recommended in applied mathematics, I show that all aftershock sequences tested in three regional earthquake catalogs (Southern and Northern California, Taiwan) and with three declustering techniques (nearest-neighbor, second-order moment, window methods) follow a stretched exponential instead of a power law. These results infer that aftershocks are due to a simpler relaxation process than originally thought, in accordance with most other relaxation processes observed in Nature.