The unprecedented amount of data collected on large recent earthquakes, such as the 2011 Tohoku, M9, or 2016 Kaikoura, M7.8, earthquakes, has exposed the unexpected richness of these poorly understood devastating events. On the other side of the spectrum of active faults behavior, the variety of unconventional seismic and aseismic events, such as repeating earthquakes, non-volcanic tremors or slow slip events, has enlarged way beyond our understanding of the physics of the earth. In the meantime, todays computational capabilities allow us to develop more and more realistic models to test at all scales the physics unravelled in laboratory experiments. However, the complete richness of fault behaviors resulting from todays data revolution is yet to be fully captured by these models. Experimental studies, new numerical implementations and most recent data processing strategies should now evolve hand in hand in order to see the emergence of new physical concepts underlying the so-called earthquake cycle along active faults.

We welcome contributions from geodesy, seismology or any discipline providing new, unexplained observations on active faults at all spatial and temporal scales. We also invite experimental studies that unravel new physical concepts and modeling studies implementing such new fault physics. We view this session as a forum for new, yet to be explained, observations and surprising physical concepts on active faults and their behavior.