Calculations of Coulomb stress changes have shown that moderate to large earthquakes may increase stress at the location of future earthquakes. Coulomb stress transfers have thus been widely accepted to explain earthquake sequences, especially for sequences occurring within parallel or collinear fault systems. Relating, under this framework, successive earthquakes occurring within more complex fault systems (i.e. conjugate fault system) is more challenging. In this study, we assess which ingredients of the Coulomb stress change theory are decisive for explaining the succession of three large (Mw7+) earthquakes that occurred on a conjugate fault system in the NE Lut, East Iran, during a 30-year period. These earthquakes belong to a larger seismic sequence made up of 11 earthquakes (Mw5.9+) from 1936 to 1997. To reach our goal, we calculate, at each earthquake date, the stress changes generated by the static deformation of the preceding earthquakes, the following postseismic deformation due to the viscoelastic relaxation of the lithosphere, and the interseismic deformation since 1936. We first show that accurately modelling the source and receiver fault geometry is crucial to precisely estimating Coulomb stress changes. Then we show that 7 out of 10 earthquakes of the NE Lut sequence, considering the uncertainties, are favoured by the previous earthquakes. Furthermore, the last two M7+ earthquakes of the sequence (1979 and 1997) have mainly been favoured by the moderate Mw ∼ 6 earthquakes. Finally, we investigate the link between the Coulomb stress changes due to previous earthquakes and the rupture extension of the next earthquake and show that a correlation does exist for some earthquakes but is not systematic.

中文翻译：

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复杂断层系统中的断层相互作用：1936-1997 NE Lut地震序列的见解

库仑应力变化的计算表明，中到大地震可能会增加未来地震现场的应力。因此，库仑应力传递已被广泛用来解释地震序列，尤其是对于平行或共线断层系统中发生的地震序列。在此框架下，在更复杂的断层系统（即共轭断层系统）内发生的连续地震的挑战性更大。在这项研究中，我们评估了库仑应力变化理论的哪些要素对于解释在30年内在伊朗东部NE Lut的共轭断层系统上发生的三场大地震（Mw7 +）的连续起决定性作用。这些地震属于较大的地震序列，由1936年至1997年的11次地震（Mw5.9 +）组成。为了达到我们的目标，我们计算，在每个地震发生的日期，应力变化是由前一次地震的静态变形，由于岩石圈的粘弹性松弛导致的随后的后地震变形以及自1936年以来的地震变形所产生的。对于精确估算库仑应力变化至关重要。然后我们表明，考虑到不确定性，NE Lut序列的10个地震中有7个受到先前地震的青睐。此外，该序列的最后两次M7 +地震（1979年和1997年）主要受到Mw〜6级地震的青睐。最后，