Self-Organized Bistability Associated with First-Order Phase Transitions

Self-organized criticality elucidates the conditions under which physical and biological systems tune themselves to the edge of a second-order phase transition, with scale invariance. Motivated by the empirical observation of bimodal distributions of activity in neuroscience and other fields, we pro...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPhysical review letters Vol. 116; no. 24; p. 240601
Main Authors di Santo, Serena, Burioni, Raffaella, Vezzani, Alessandro, Muñoz, Miguel A
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 17.06.2016
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Summary:Self-organized criticality elucidates the conditions under which physical and biological systems tune themselves to the edge of a second-order phase transition, with scale invariance. Motivated by the empirical observation of bimodal distributions of activity in neuroscience and other fields, we propose and analyze a theory for the self-organization to the point of phase coexistence in systems exhibiting a first-order phase transition. It explains the emergence of regular avalanches with attributes of scale invariance that coexist with huge anomalous ones, with realizations in many fields.
ISSN:1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.240601