Rupture Dynamics & Supershear Earthquakes
How fast and how far a rupture runs controls the shaking it produces. We image and model rupture propagation across complex fault systems, with a focus on supershear earthquakes — events whose rupture front outruns the shear-wave speed, intensifying ground motion. Using array back-projection and waveform modeling we have characterized supershear and geometrically complex ruptures in the 2018 Palu, 2023 Kahramanmaraş (Türkiye), and 2025 Mandalay earthquakes, and established a global census showing that supershear ruptures are more common than previously recognized (Bao et al., Nature Geoscience 2022). We also study what arrests ruptures and what lets them jump between fault segments.
