Many chaotic and complicated systems cannot be analysed by traditional methods. In 1987 P.Bak, C.Tang, and K.A.Wiesenfeld developed a new concept called Self-Organised Criticality (SOC) to explain the behaviour of composite systems containing a large number of elements that interact over a short range. In general this theory applies to complex systems that naturally evolve to a critical state in which a minor event starts a chain reaction that can affect any number of elements in the system. It was later shown that many complex phenomena such as flux pinning in superconductors, dynamics of granular systems, earthquakes, droplet formation and biological evolution show signs of SOC. The dynamics of complex systems in nature often occurs in terms of punctuation, or avalanches rather than following a smooth, gradual path. Extremal dynamics is used to model the temporal evolution of many different complex systems. Specifically the Bak-Sneppen evolution model, the Sneppen interface depinning model, the Zaitsev flux creep model, invasion percolation, and several other depinning models. This thesis considers extremal dynamics at constant flux where M>1 smallest barriers are simultaneously updated as opposed to models in the limit of zero flux where only the smallest barrier is updated. For concreteness, we study the Bak-Sneppen (BS) evolution model [Phys. Rev. Lett. 71, 4083 (1993)]. M=1 corresponds to the original BS model. The aim of the present work is to understand analytically through mean field theory the random neighbour version of the generalised BS model and verify the results against the computer simulations. This is done in order to scrutinise the trustworthiness of our numerical simulations. The computer simulations are found to be identical with results obtained from the analytical approach. Due to this agreement, we know that our simulations will produce reliable results for the nearest neighbour version of the generalised BS model. Since the nearest neighbour version of the generalised BS model cannot be solved analytically, we have to rely on simulations. We investigate the critical behaviour of both versions of the model using the scaling theory. We look at various distributions and their scaling properties, and also measure the critical exponents accurately verifying whether the scaling relations holds. The effect of increasing from M=1 to M>1 is surprising with dramatic decrease in size of the scaling regime.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:395826 |
| Date | January 2000 |
| Creators | Datta, Arijeet Suryadeep |
| Contributors | Jensen, Henrik |
| Publisher | Imperial College London |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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