1/f(alpha) noise from correlations between avalanches in self-organized criticality

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2002 Nov;66(5 Pt 1):050101. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.66.050101. Epub 2002 Nov 19.

Abstract

We show that large, slowly driven systems can evolve to a self-organized critical state where long-range temporal correlations between bursts or avalanches produce low-frequency 1/f(alpha) noise. The avalanches can occur instantaneously in the external time scale of the slow drive, and their event statistics are described by power-law distributions. A specific example of this behavior is provided by numerical simulations of a deterministic "sandpile" model, where a scaling relation links alpha with the avalanche power-law exponent.