Universality in Sandpiles, Interface Depinning, and Earthquake Models
Abstract
Recent numerical results for a model describing dispersive transport in ricepiles are explained by mapping the model to the depinning transition of an elastic interface that is dragged at one end through a random medium. The average velocity of transport vanishes with system size L as <v>~L2-D~L-0.23, and the avalanche size distribution exponent τ = 2-1/D~=1.55, where D~=2.23 from interface depinning. We conjecture that the purely deterministic Burridge-Knopoff ``train'' model for earthquakes is in the same universality class.
- Publication:
-
Physical Review Letters
- Pub Date:
- July 1996
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevLett.77.111
- arXiv:
- arXiv:cond-mat/9603120
- Bibcode:
- 1996PhRvL..77..111P
- Keywords:
-
- Condensed Matter;
- Nonlinear Sciences - Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems
- E-Print:
- 10 pages, Revtex