Avalanche exponents and corrections to scaling for a stochastic sandpile

Abstract

We study distributions of dissipative and nondissipative avalanches in Manna's stochastic sandpile, in one and two dimensions. Our results lead to the following conclusions: (1) avalanche distributions, in general, do not follow simple power laws, but rather have the form $P(s)\sim s^{-{\tau }_s}(\ln s{)}^{\gamma }f(s/s_c)$, with $f$ a cutoff function; (2) the exponents for sizes of dissipative avalanches in two dimensions differ markedly from the corresponding values for the Bak-Tang-Wiesenfeld (BTW) model, implying that the BTW and Manna models belong to distinct universality classes; (3) dissipative avalanche distributions obey finite size scaling, unlike in the BTW model.

8 pages, 4 figures