Renormalization-Group Transformations and Correlations of Seismicity

The effect of transformations analogous to those of the real-space renormalization group are analyzed for the temporal occurrence of earthquakes. A recently reported scaling law for the distribution of recurrence times implies that these distributions must be invariant under such transformations, for which the role of the correlations between the magnitudes and the recurrence times are fundamental. This approach puts the study of the temporal structure of seismicity in the context of critical phenomena.