Signatures of the self-affinity of fracture and faulting in pre-seismic electromagnetic emissions

Abstract. Of particular interest is the detection of precursors of an impending rupture. Theoretical, numerical studies along with laboratory experiments indicate that precursory signs of an impending failure are the sudden drop of fractal dimension and entropy, along with the anticorrelated, for large system sizes, rising of Hurst exponent and drop of a frequency–size power-law scaling exponent. Based on the widely accepted concept of the self-affine nature of faulting and fracture, we examine whether these precursory signs exist in the fracto-electromagnetic emissions resulting from the activation of a single fault.