Lorincz Kinga A, Wijngaarden Rinke J
Division of Physics and Astronomy, Faculty of Sciences, Vrije Universiteit, De Boelelaan 1081, 1081HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2007 Oct;76(4 Pt 1):040301. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.76.040301. Epub 2007 Oct 4.
Many punctuated phenomena in nature are claimed [e.g., by the theory of self-organized criticality (SOC)] to be power-law distributed. In our experiments on a three-dimensional pile of long-grained rice, we find that by only changing the boundary condition of the system, we switch from such power-law-distributed avalanche sizes to quasiperiodic system-spanning avalanches. Conversely, by removing ledges the incidence of system-spanning avalanches is significantly reduced. This may offer a perspective on new avalanche prevention schemes. In addition, our findings may help to explain why the archetype of SOC, the sandpile, was found to have power-law-distributed avalanches in some experiments, while in other experiments quasiperiodic system-spanning avalanches were found.
自然界中的许多间断现象（例如，根据自组织临界性理论（SOC））被认为是幂律分布的。在我们对三维长粒米堆进行的实验中，我们发现仅通过改变系统的边界条件，就能使雪崩规模从幂律分布转变为准周期性的跨越整个系统的雪崩。相反，去除壁架会显著降低跨越整个系统的雪崩发生率。这可能为新的雪崩预防方案提供一个视角。此外，我们的发现可能有助于解释为什么在一些实验中发现SOC的原型——沙堆具有幂律分布的雪崩，而在其他实验中却发现了准周期性的跨越整个系统的雪崩。
