Frictional Melting in Hydrothermal Fluid-Rich Faults: Field and Experimental Evidence From the Bolfín Fault Zone (Chile).

Tectonic pseudotachylytes are thought to be unique to certain water-deficient seismogenic environments and their presence is considered to be rare in the geological record. Here, we present field and experimental evidence that frictional melting can occur in hydrothermal fluid-rich faults hosted in the continental crust. Pseudotachylytes were found in the >40 km-long Bolfín Fault Zone of the Atacama Fault System, within two ca. 1 m-thick (ultra)cataclastic strands hosted in a damage-zone made of chlorite-epidote-rich hydrothermally altered tonalite. This alteration state indicates that hydrothermal fluids were active during the fault development. Pseudotachylytes, characterized by presenting amygdales, cut and are cut by chlorite-, epidote- and calcite-bearing veins. In turn, crosscutting relationship with the hydrothermal veins indicates pseudotachylytes were formed during this period of fluid activity. Rotary shear experiments conducted on bare surfaces of hydrothermally altered rocks at seismic slip velocities (3 m s-1) resulted in the production of vesiculated pseudotachylytes both at dry and water-pressurized conditions, with melt lubrication as the primary mechanism for fault dynamic weakening. The presented evidence challenges the common hypothesis that pseudotachylytes are limited to fluid-deficient environments, and gives insights into the ancient seismic activity of the system. Both field observations and experimental evidence, indicate that pseudotachylytes may easily be produced in hydrothermal environments, and could be a common co-seismic fault product. Consequently, melt lubrication could be considered one of the most efficient seismic dynamic weakening mechanisms in crystalline basement rocks of the continental crust.

G: Fracture energy, friction and dissipation in earthquakes.

Recent estimates of fracture energy G' in earthquakes show a power-law dependence with slip u which can be summarized as G' ∝ ua where a is a positive real slightly larger than one. For cracks with sliding friction, fracture energy can be equated to Gf : the post-failure integral of the dynamic weakening curve. If the dominant dissipative process in earthquakes is friction, G' and Gf should be comparable and show a similar scaling with slip. We test this hypothesis by analyzing experiments performed on various cohesive and non-cohesive rock types, under wet and dry conditions, with imposed deformation typical of seismic slip (normal stress of tens of MPa, target slip velocity > 1 m/s and fast accelerations ≈ 6.5 m/s2). The resulting fracture energy Gf is similar to the seismological estimates, with Gf and G' being comparable over most of the slip range. However, Gf appears to saturate after several meters of slip, while in most of the reported earthquake sequences, G' appears to increase further and surpasses Gf at large magnitudes. We analyze several possible causes of such discrepancy, in particular, additional off-fault damage in large natural earthquakes.