Catastrophes and Self-Organized Criticality

Self-Organized Criticality

The causes and possible relations between the abundance of fractal structures and 1/f signals found in nature have puzzled scientists for years. Based on observations of computer simulations of the cellular automata sandpile model, the term, self-organized criticality (SOC) was invented by theoretical physicists Bak and coworkers (1987) and was used to explain a universal dynamic organizing pro...

Self-organized criticality

We study the concept of the self-organized criticality (SOC) and its application to a wide range of scientific problems with very different backgrounds. In particular, we discuss the Bak-TangWiesenfeld sandpile model which displays SOC behavior and by computing the critical exponent for the two-dimensional model we find the agreement with the known result. Finally, we provide a new example of Z...

Self-Organized Criticality

The concept of self-organized criticality (SOC) has been evoked by Bak, Tang and Wiesenfeld (BTW) as a possible unifying framework to describe a vast class of dynamically driven systems which evolve spontaneously toward a critical stationary state with no characteristic time or length scale. In this essay we will discuss SOC models that have been studied and to what extent they are related to r...

Criticality, self-organized

Self-organized criticality

The concept of self-organized criticality was introduced to explain the behaviour of the sandpile model. In this model, particles are randomly dropped onto a square grid of boxes. When a box accumulates four particles they are redistributed to the four adjacent boxes or lost off the edge of the grid. Redistributions can lead to further instabilities with the possibility of more particles being ...