2000/03/16 by Alessandro Vespignani, Ronald Dickman, Miguel A. Munoz +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.62.4564
41 pages, 23 figures
arxiv created 2000/03/16 · arxiv updated 2016/08/31
We study sandpile models as closed systems, with conserved energy density ζ playing the role of an external parameter. The critical energy density, ζc, marks a nonequilibrium phase transition between active and absorbing states. Several fixed-energy sandpiles are studied in extensive simulations of stationary and transient properties, as well as the dynamics of roughening in an interface-height representation. Our primary goal is to identify the universality classes of such models, in hopes of assessing the validity of two recently proposed approaches to sandpiles: a phenomenological continuum Langevin description with absorbing states, and a mapping to driven interface dynamics in random media. Our results strongly suggest that there are at least three distinct universality classes for sandpiles.