Sandpile on Scale-Free Networks

K. -I. Goh, D. -S. Lee, B. Kahng, D. Kim

Published 2003-05-19, updated 2003-10-02Version 2

We investigate the avalanche dynamics of the Bak-Tang-Wiesenfeld (BTW) sandpile model on scale-free (SF) networks, where threshold height of each node is distributed heterogeneously, given as its own degree. We find that the avalanche size distribution follows a power law with an exponent $\tau$. Applying the theory of multiplicative branching process, we obtain the exponent $\tau$ and the dynamic exponent $z$ as a function of the degree exponent $\gamma$ of SF networks as $\tau=\gamma/(\gamma-1)$ and $z=(\gamma-1)/(\gamma-2)$ in the range $2 < \gamma < 3$ and the mean field values $\tau=1.5$ and $z=2.0$ for $\gamma >3$, with a logarithmic correction at $\gamma=3$. The analytic solution supports our numerical simulation results. We also consider the case of uniform threshold, finding that the two exponents reduce to the mean field ones.