Leon Knopoff

Geophysics

Office: 1809 Slicter Hakk
Phone: (310) 825-1885
email

UCLA Earth & Space Sciences

Educational Background:

Ph.D., Caltech, 1949.

Research Interest:

I am interested in the physics of self-organizing dissipative systems, with special emphasis on the problems of the clustering of earthquakes. Of particular concern has been the study of self-organizing processes under the influence of non-uniform geometries, and under the influence of various models of the interactions over short time scales, both of which control the large-scale evolution in time and space, with special attention paid to the stability and stationarity of such coupled-map systems. I am concerned with modeling the dynamics of growth and healing of fractures in brittle solids.

Selected Recent Publications:

• L. Knopoff, J.A. Landoni and M.S. Abinante, Dynamical model of an earthquake fault with localization, Phys. Rev. A., 46, 7445-7449, 1992.
• H.-J. Xu and L. Knopoff, Periodicity and chaos in a one-dimensional dynamical model of earthquakes, Phys. Rev. E, 50, 3577-3581, 1994.
• S. Nielsen, L. Knopoff and A. Tarantola, Model of earthquake recurrence: Role of elastic wave radiation, relaxation of friction, and inhomogeneity, Jour. Geophys. Research, 100, 12,423-12,430, 1995.
• L. Knopoff, The organization of seismicity on fault networks, Proc. National Acad. Sciences, 93, 3830-3837, 1996.
• D. Sornette and L. Knopoff, Linear stochastic dynamics with power-law properties, submitted to Physica D.