The spectrum of the abelian sandpile model

Abstract

In their previous work, the authors studied the abelian sandpile model on graphs constructed from a growing piece of a plane or space tiling, given periodic or open boundary conditions, and identified spectral parameters which govern the asymptotic spectral gap and asymptotic mixing time. This paper gives a general method of determining the spectral parameters either computationally or asymptotically, and determines the spectral parameters in specific examples.