Self-organized criticality

TL;DR

This paper reviews the concept of self-organized criticality, explaining how dissipative systems naturally reach critical states with phenomena spanning various scales, supported by exact results from the Abelian sandpile model.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of self-organized criticality and presents exact results for the Abelian sandpile model, highlighting its significance.

Findings

Self-organized criticality occurs in dissipative systems.

Exact results are demonstrated for the Abelian sandpile.

Critical phenomena span multiple scales.

Abstract

I review the concept of self-organized criticality, wherein dissipative systems naturally drive themselves to a critical state with important phenomena occurring over a wide range of length and time scales. Several exact results are demonstrated for the Abelian sandpile.