Abstract
We discuss mean-field theories for self-organized criticality and the connection with the general theory of branching processes. We point out that the nature of the self-organization is not addressed properly by the previously proposed mean-field theories. We introduce a new mean-field model that explicitly takes the boundary conditions into account; in this way, the local dynamical rules are coupled to a global equation that drives the control parameter to its critical value. We study the model numerically, and analytically we compute the avalanche distributions.
- Received 29 June 1995
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.75.4071
©1995 American Physical Society