Scaling behaviour in probabilistic neuronal cellular automata

We study a neural network model of interacting stochastic discrete two--state cellular automata on a regular lattice. The system is externally tuned to a critical point which varies with the degree of stochasticity (or the effective temperature). There are avalanches of neuronal activity, namely spatially and temporally contiguous sites of activity; a detailed numerical study of these activity avalanches is presented, and single, joint and marginal probability distributions are computed. At the critical point, we find that the scaling exponents for the variables are in good agreement with a mean--field theory.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures Accepted for publication in Physical Review

Memoryless nonlinear response: A simple mechanism for the 1/f noise

Discovering the mechanism underlying the ubiquity of $"1/f^{\alpha}"$ noise has been a long--standing problem. The wide range of systems in which the fluctuations show the implied long--time correlations suggests the existence of some simple and general mechanism that is independent of the details of any specific system. We argue here that a {\it memoryless nonlinear response} suffices to explain the observed non--trivial values of $\alpha$: a random input noisy signal $S(t)$ with a power spectrum varying as $1/f^{\alpha'}$, when fed to an element with such a response function $R$ gives an output $R(S(t))$ that can have a power spectrum $1/f^{\alpha}$ with $\alpha < \alpha'$. As an illustrative example, we show that an input Brownian noise ($\alpha'=2$) acting on a device with a sigmoidal response function R(S)= \sgn(S)|S|^x, with $x<1$, produces an output with $\alpha = 3/2 +x$, for $0 \leq x \leq 1/2$. Our discussion is easily extended to more general types of input noise as well as more general response functions.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

The Scattering amplitude for Rationally extended shape invariant Eckart potentials

We consider the rationally extended exactly solvable Eckart potentials which exhibit extended shape invariance property. These potentials are isospectral to the conventional Eckart potential. The scattering amplitude for these rationally ex- tended potentials is calculated analytically for the generalized mth (m = 1, 2, 3, ...) case by considering the asymptotic behavior of the scattering state wave functions which are written in terms of some new polynomials related to the Jacobi polyno- mials. As expected, in the m = 0 limit, this scattering amplitude goes over to the scattering amplitude for the conventional Eckart potential.Comment: 8 pages. Latex, No fi