Abstract
Abstract
We study the Abelian sandpile model on a special playground, a cylinder of width w and of circumference c. When
c
≪
w
, we describe a phenomenon which has not been observed in other geometries: the probability distribution of avalanche sizes has a ladder structure, with the first step consisting of avalanches of size up to
w
⋅
c
/
2
that are essentially equiprobable, except for a small exponential tail of order about 10 c. We explain this phenomenon and describe subsequent steps.
Funder
National Centres of Competence in Research SwissMAP
FNS
Subject
General Physics and Astronomy,Mathematical Physics,Modeling and Simulation,Statistics and Probability,Statistical and Nonlinear Physics