  I study a recently proposed statistical model of earthquake dynamics that
incorporates aging as a fundamental ingredient. The model is known to generate
earthquake sequences that quantitatively reproduce the spatial and temporal
clustering of events observed in actual seismic patterns. The aim of the
present work is to investigate if this model can give support to the empirical
evidence that earthquakes can be triggered by transient small perturbations,
particularly by the passing of seismic waves originated in events occurring in
far geographical locations. The effect of seismic waves is incorporated into
the model by assuming that they produce instantaneous small modifications in
the dynamical state of the system at the time they are applied. This change in
the dynamical state has two main effects. On one side, it induces earthquakes
that occur right at the application of the perturbation. These are called
immediate events. On the other side, after the application of the perturbation
there is a delayed effect: the seismic activity increases abruptly after the
perturbation, then falls down below the level of background activity, and
eventually recovers to the background value. The time scale of these variations
depends on the internal dynamics of the system, and is totally independent of
the duration of the perturbation. The number of delayed events in excess of the
background activity is typically observed to be around a factor of twenty
larger than the number of immediate events. The origin of the enhanced activity
period following the perturbation is associated to the existence of aging
relaxation, and it does not occur if relaxation is absent. These findings give
support to the experimental evidence that earthquake can be remotely triggered
by small transient perturbations as those produced by seismic waves.
