The observed earthquake scaling laws indicate the existence of phenomena closely associated with the proximity of the system to a critical point. Taking this view that earthquakes are critical phenomena (dynamic phase transitions), here we investigate whether in this case the Lifshitz-Slyozov-Wagner (LSW) theory for phase transitions showing that the characteristic size of the minority phase droplets grows with time as t 1 / 3 is applicable. To achieve this goal, we analyzed the Japanese seismic data in a new time domain termed natural time and find that an LSW behavior is actually obeyed by a precursory change of seismicity and in particular by the fluctuations of the entropy change of seismicity under time reversal before the Tohoku earthquake of magnitude 9.0 that occurred on 11 March 2011 in Japan. Furthermore, the Tsallis entropic index q is found to exhibit a precursory increase.
Keywords: earthquakes; index q; natural time analysis; non-extensive statistical mechanics.