Investigation of seismicity after the initiation of a Seismic Electric Signal activity until the main shock.

The behavior of seismicity in the area candidate to suffer a main shock is investigated after the observation of the Seismic Electric Signal activity until the impending main shock. This is based on the view that the occurrence of earthquakes is a critical phenomenon to which statistical dynamics may be applied. In the present work, analysing the time series of small earthquakes, the concept of natural time chi was used and the results revealed that the approach to criticality itself can be manifested by the probability density function (PDF) of kappa(1) calculated over an appropriate statistical ensemble. Here, kappa(1) is the variance kappa(1)(=<chi(2)>-(2)) resulting from the power spectrum of a function defined as Phi(omega)= summation operator(k=1)(N) p(k) exp(iomegachi(k)), where p(k) is the normalized energy of the k-th small earthquake and omega the natural frequency. This PDF exhibits a maximum at kappa(1) asymptotically equal to 0.070 a few days before the main shock. Examples are presented, referring to the magnitude 6 approximately 7 class earthquakes that occurred in Greece.