12 research outputs found
Effect of Noise on Patterns Formed by Growing Sandpiles
We consider patterns generated by adding large number of sand grains at a
single site in an abelian sandpile model with a periodic initial configuration,
and relaxing. The patterns show proportionate growth. We study the robustness
of these patterns against different types of noise, \textit{viz.}, randomness
in the point of addition, disorder in the initial periodic configuration, and
disorder in the connectivity of the underlying lattice. We find that the
patterns show a varying degree of robustness to addition of a small amount of
noise in each case. However, introducing stochasticity in the toppling rules
seems to destroy the asymptotic patterns completely, even for a weak noise. We
also discuss a variational formulation of the pattern selection problem in
growing abelian sandpiles.Comment: 15 pages,16 figure
Spectral properties of zero temperature dynamics in a model of a compacting granular column
The compacting of a column of grains has been studied using a one-dimensional
Ising model with long range directed interactions in which down and up spins
represent orientations of the grain having or not having an associated void.
When the column is not shaken (zero 'temperature') the motion becomes highly
constrained and under most circumstances we find that the generator of the
stochastic dynamics assumes an unusual form: many eigenvalues become
degenerate, but the associated multi-dimensional invariant spaces have but a
single eigenvector. There is no spectral expansion and a Jordan form must be
used. Many properties of the dynamics are established here analytically; some
are not. General issues associated with the Jordan form are also taken up.Comment: 34 pages, 4 figures, 3 table