Statistics of Earthquakes in Simple Models of Heterogeneous Faults

Simple models for ruptures along a heterogeneous earthquake fault zone are studied, focusing on the interplay between the roles of disorder and dynamical effects. A class of models are found to operate naturally at a critical point whose properties yield power-law scaling of earthquake statistics. Various dynamical effects can change the behavior to a distribution of small events combined with characteristic system size events. The studies emnloy various analytic methods as well as simulations.