Phase transition and critical behavior in a model of organized criticality

Abstract

We study a model of "organized" criticality, where a single avalanche propagates through an a priori static (i.e., organized) sandpile configuration. The latter is chosen according to an i.i.d. distribution from a Borel probability measure ρ on [0, 1]. The avalanche dynamics is driven by a standard toppling rule, however, we simplify the geometry by placing the problem on a directed, rooted tree. As our main result, we characterize which ρ are critical in the sense that they do not admit an infinite avalanche but exhibit a power-law decay of avalanche sizes. Our analysis reveals close connections to directed site-percolation, both in the characterization of criticality and in the values of the critical exponents.