.

Rubin Home

Department of Geosciences 
319 Guyot Hall 
Princeton University 
Princeton, NJ 08544

Phone: (609) 258-1506
E-Mail:

Research

I am a geophysicist who tries to combine seismic and geodetic observations with numerical models in novel ways, with the goal of improving our understanding of brittle deformation of the crust.  Applications are primarily to regions of active volcanism and faulting. 

With recent post-doc Jean-Paul Ampuero I have developed numerical and analytical models of earthquake nucleation that have led to new, intuitive ways of understanding the complex equations of friction that geoscientists have been using for over 2 decades.  By identifying those aspects of the friction law that are most relevant to nucleation, this work has also led to a collaboration with Chris Marone to better constrain those frictional properties through laboratory experiments.  Currently, post-doc Yajing Liu and I are trying to extend these concepts to understanding the mechanics of episodic “slow slip and tremor” events that have recently been detected in subduction zones worldwide. 

Other ongoing projects stem from the use of precise earthquake relocation techniques that enable one to image fault zone structures and earthquake interaction with unprecedented detail.  These relocated earthquake catalogs, with relative location accuracies as good as a few meters, have spawned several projects concerning the origin of “streaks” of microearthquakes, the asymmetric distribution of aftershocks of microearthquakes on the San Andreas fault, and elastodynamic models of earthquakes on faults separating rocks with differing elastic properties.  Graduate student Enning Wang is currently working in this area.

In a previous life I made my living creating numerical models dike propagation that coupled the transport of magma and heat to elastic deformation of the host rock, with a variety of applications in mind.  Periodically I get tugged back in this direction.  For a list of projects, see here.

For a description of research topics, see:

Earthquake Nucleation

Episodic Slow Slip and Tremor in Subduction Zones

Earthquake Relocation and Fault Mechanics

 Dike Propagation