On self-organised criticality in one dimension

In critical phenomena, many of the characteristic features encountered in higher dimensions such as scaling, data collapse and associated critical exponents are also present in one dimension. Likewise for systems displaying self-organised criticality. We show that the one-dimensional Bak–Tang–Wiesenfeld sandpile model, although trivial, does indeed fall into the general framework of self-organised criticality. We also investigate the Oslo ricepile model, driven by adding slope units at the boundary or in the bulk. We determine the critical exponents by measuring the scaling of the kth moment of the avalanche size probability with system size. The avalanche size exponent depends on the type of drive but the avalanche dimension remains constant.