Unraveling the roles of fault asperities over earthquake cycles

•Asperities can behave differently depending on their locations.•Fault-interior asperity initially hosts microseismicity and then impedes slow slip.•Fault-interior asperity finally breaks to produce fast and energetic coseismic slip.•Fault-margin asperity undergoes aseismic slip over most phases of earthquake cycle.•Asperities affect strain accumulation and release over a wide spatiotemporal domain. Fault asperities can produce concentrated slips during large earthquakes and intensify damage. However, how asperities control fault behavior during other phases of the earthquake cycle remains poorly known. Here, we conduct friction experiment on a laboratory fault featuring two prominent geometric asperities to directly image their influences on long-term and short-term seismicity, and the nucleation and propagation of the mainshock. The laboratory observations and supporting numerical simulations reveal that one asperity located in the fault interior behaves firstly as a mechanical attractor to long-term seismicity, then a barrier to preseismic slow slip, and ultimately a source of large coseismic slip. In contrast, another asperity located near the fault margin primarily undergoes persistent aseismic slip throughout most phases of the earthquake cycle. These results provide new insights into how asperities partition strain across a broad spatiotemporal domain, establishing a physical link between long-term and short-term fault behaviors and the occurrence of large earthquakes.