Self-organized criticality in deterministic systems with disorder

TL;DR

This paper explores how deterministic signals, including chaotic and periodic ones, can replace noise in the Bak-Sneppen model while preserving Self-Organized Criticality, revealing effects on universality classes and thresholds.

Contribution

It demonstrates that deterministic signals can substitute noise in SOC models, with chaotic signals preserving universality and periodic signals leading to different universality classes.

Findings

Chaotic signals preserve the universality class of SOC.

Periodic signals can preserve SOC if their spectrum is broad.

Thresholds depend on the time correlation of the deterministic signal.

Abstract

Using the Bak-Sneppen model of biological evolution as our paradigm, we investigate in which cases noise can be substituted with a deterministic signal without destroying Self-Organized Criticality (SOC). If the deterministic signal is chaotic the universality class is preserved; some non-universal features, such as the threshold, depend on the time correlation of the signal. We also show that, if the signal introduced is periodic, SOC is preserved but in a different universality class, as long as the spectrum of frequencies is broad enough.