Eur. Phys. J. B 76, 13-20 (2010)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2010-00198-x

Finite size scaling in BTW like sandpile models

Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati 781039, Assam, India

Corresponding author: ^a santra@iitg.ernet.in

Received: 27 July 2009
Revised: 23 January 2010
Published online: 29 June 2010

Abstract

Lattice statistical models of equilibrium critical phenomena generally obey finite size scaling (FSS) ansatz. However, the critical behavior of the prototypical BTW sandpile model demonstrating self-organized criticality at out of equilibrium is described by a peculiar multiscaling behaviour. FSS hypothesis is verified here on two versions (RSM1 and RSM2) of a rotational sandpile model (RSM) with broken mirror symmetry. In these models, sand grains flow only in the forward direction and in a specific rotational direction from an active site after toppling. The toppling rules are such that RSM1 will have less randomness whereas RSM2 will have more randomness with respect to RSM. RSM1 is expected to be more closer to BTW whereas RSM2 is expected to be more closer to Manna's stochastic model. Both RSM1 and RSM2 are found to belong to the same universality class of RSM. The scaling functions of RSM1 and RSM2 are also found to obey usual FSS hypothesis at out of equilibrium instead of multiscaling as in BTW.