Sharif Digital Repository

Even in the simplest of activities in the brain such as resting condition, there are connections in between different regions of the brain so that the whole system functions consistently in harmony. Studies related to brain connectivity provides an opportunity to better understand how the brain works. To assess these connectivities an estimation is usually conducted based on brain signals. Among different estimation methods, quantities of information theory are in general more practical due to avoiding any assumptions toward the system model and the ability to recognize linear and non-linear connectivity. One of the main quantities related to the information theory is in fact, entropy.... 

Experiments conducted in recent two decades indicated critical behavior in neural activity at different scales. Theoretically occurrences of these critical and power-law behavior can significantly facilitate brain activities correspondent to computation and memory tasks, but attaining the critical point essentially demands externally fine-tuning which has not been established yet. This fine-tuning often lies with placing system at transition point. Recent studies of group showed that a transition from synchronous to asynchronous phase could be achievable by a change in external parameters. At the very transition point, neuronal avalanches statistically demonstrate a power-law behavior which... 

A complte set of characteristic parameters of the sandpile models is still unknown. We have studied the existence of ”weak chaos” critical exponent in different sandpile models and we have shown that it is a characteristic exponent of deterministic models. We have shown that BTW and Zhang models do not belong to the same universality class (contrary to Zhang’s previous conjecture and contrary to Ben-Hur & Biham’s results.) Also we have shown that directed models, specificly Ramaswamy-Dhar’s directed model form a different universality class. ”Weak chaos” exponent in also studied in massive models and we have shown that by increase of dissipation, the exponent decreases rapidly to an... 

We study the Abelian Sandpile Model and its relation with surface growth. ese two models are related through their field theories and equations of motion. It has been shown that the different features of different sandpile models can be expressed in terms of the noise term in the surface growth equation. A mapping between the simplest sandpile model, the BTW model, and a surface growth has already been introduced. is surface growth has not been studied in details so far. In this thesis we study different features of this surface growth corresponding to the BTW model, continuous sandpile model and also massive abelian sandpile model. We also consider different boundary conditions  

The four-page article by Bak, Tang and Wiesenfeld in 1987 was a beginning to a new wave of physicists’ efforts to explain and describe the concept of complexity; a not-so-well-defined concept that resists against the reductionist tools and methods of physics. The Self-organized Criticality theory presented in that article via a simple model, known as sandpile model, was first of all an effort to explain the numerous occurrence of power law distribution in nature. SOC was introduced to tell us why so many natural phenomena like Earthquakes, landslides, forest fires, extinction and other seemingly non-related catastrophic events, more or less obey the scale-less power law distribution; A... 

In this research, we want to address the question of universality classes in BTW and Manna sandpile models. So far, number of works has been devoted to this issue but the the answer remained unsolved. We will try another approach to study this question by perturbing the original models. To this end, we introduce three models that have evolution rules between BTW model and Manna model. By simulating this models, we observe that in the presence of perturbation, the probability dis- tribution has two regimes of behaviour which are separated by a new characteristic scale. The regime of small avalanches is described by the exponent of BTW model and the regime of large avalanches by the exponent... 

Edwards-Wilkinson’s equation can be achieved from a Hamiltonian. When we have the Hamiltonian for the system, there are common approaches that makes it out of critical. In other words,the ”mass” should be added to the system. In this study we have tried to simulate and solve analytically these models that are involved mass term. We try to onstruct these mass terms in a way that have a minimum impact on the system and we study the quantities that characterize the out of critical behaviors  

Percolation is a phenomenon that can be found in many physical problems. Additionally, as a statistical model, it has a very rich physics, since many fundamental concepts in the context of critical phenomena and complex systems-such as phase transition, scaling laws etc can be found in the model. Percolation phenomenon can be defined on different lattices. In this thesis we study percolation on small-world networks. In small-world networks, in addition to local bonds that connects the neighbouring sites, there exist some long-ranged bonds that connect cites far from each other. Social networks, some networks of internet or the gene networks are examples of such networks. Therefore, to study... 

Self-organized critical phenomena are interesting phenomena which are ubiquitous in nature. Examples include mountain ranges , coastlines and also activities in the hu-man's brain. In these processes, without fine-tuning of any external parameter such as the temperature, the system exhibits critical behavior. In other words, the dynamics of the system, drives it towards an state in which long range correlations in space and scaling behaviors can be seen.The first successful model which could characterize such systems was BTW model, introduced by Bak , Tang and Wiesenfeld in 1987. This model, later named Abelian sandpile model, was very simple and because of this simplicity, a large amount of... 

Since the concept of Self-Organized Criticality was introduced in terms of BTW Sandpiles model, its major features have been known as broad power law distributions without any tuning parameters. In some selforganized critical systems like brain and neural networks, some evidences and experiments show a periodic or non-power law distribution of avalanches in addition to the power-law distributions of avalanches. In this thesis we try to observe the same phenomenon in the well-known SOC models, namely the BTW and Manna sandpile models. We have considered small lattice sizes with periodic boundary conditions and a small amount of dissipation. Within such conditions we observe a periodic-like... 

Power law behavior of earthquakes has been a matter of interest for many scientists. One on these power laws known as Gutenberg-Richter law describes the magnitude distribution of earthquakes. The Burridge-Knopoff model of faults, produces the same power law distribution of events as the Gutenberg-Richter law for earthquakes. Olami, Feder and Christensen in 1992, introduced a 2-D, continues sand pile model Known as OFC that displays self-organized-criticality. They claimed that this model is equivalent to Burridge-Knopoff model. It means that criticality is the origin of power law behavior of the Burridge-Knopoff model. Nevertheless, there are some evidence against criticality in the... 

Surface growth have been one of the most interesting topics of research in non-equilibrium Statistical physics, due to their relevance in studying industrial growth processes. Many models such as Edwards-Wilkinson and KPZ have been proposed to study these systems where by incorporating renormalization group, numerical integration and computer simulations we can derive their critical exponents. In general, a thermal noise is implemented in these models, however, other types can be used as well. In particular for the case of Edwards-Wilkinson, it has been shown that a multiplicative noise changes the universality class of the model. In this thesis we want to investigate the effects of... 

Sandpile models are the simplest models to study self organized criticality (SOC). In these phenomena, system reaches its critical state and shows power law behavior without fine tuning of any external parameters. In nature, many examples of such phenomena has been observed such as earthquakes, rainfalls and heights of mountains. In SOC systems, always there is an input and an out put of energy. In sandpile models the dissipative sites that play the role of energy dissipation, are usualy put on the boundary. In this study we have considered sandpile models which have dissipative site in the bulk. We have controled the ratio of the dissipative sites to the number of whole sites and have shown... 

Self-Organized Criticality (SOC) is observed in different systems in nature. Hights of mountains earthquakes and traffic are a few examples. In such systems, without tuning external parameters critical behavior is found. In other words the dynamics of the system takes it towards criticality, where the correlation length is very large and scaling laws are observed. Due to scale invariance, events of any size are found; for example in the case of earthquakes, one can find earthquakes with any sizes in the earth. Each event causes a cost and larger events cause much larger cost. Therefore it would be of great importance if one could somehow destroy criticality and as a result diminish large and... 

Many different scaling laws are observed in financial data. As an example, the distribution of Log-Return of stock prices obey power law, provided relatively short time intervals are considered. In standard statistical physics, scaling laws are observed in critical phenomena, where the system has long-ranged correlations. Within the same context, to arrive at criticality one has to tune some external parameters, such as the temperature. Yet, there are a group of systems that tend towards criticality through their dynamics. Such systems are called self-organised critical systems.There have been proposed many different mechanisms and models to address why power laws are observed in financial... 

There are experiments that conclude the brain is in the critical or near the critical region. These researches extract avalanches from the neuronal activity and then show that avalanche size (or duration) distribution obeys the power-law distribution. Defining avalanches from neuronal activity has some challenges. In some cases deciding the threshold (which determines the beginning and end of an avalanche) seems arbitrary or fine-tuned. In this thesis, we will show how different thresholds for defining avalanche and different time resolutions for defining neuronal activity can change avalanche size (or duration) distribution  

Many statistical systems such as earthquakes, road trafcs, forest fres, neurocortical avalanches etc. exhibit self-organized criticality (SOC). In such systems without tuning extrenal parameters, the system arrives at criticality. During recent decades, a number of models are introduced which show the same charactristics. These models have made a platform to investigate the physics of self-organized criticality. Among them, sandpile models are the best known models. They exhibit critical behaviour such as scaling laws. Also in some of them conformal invariance is checked nummerically.Most of sandpile models deal with slope parameters, that is, the main dynamical parameters are the local... 

Based on the large number of interacting cells and their abundant connections, human brain is a complex system able to produce interesting collective behaviors. Studying these collective behaviors needs special tools that potentially could be found in the context of the statistical physics of critical phenomena, as these tools are specifically developed for understanding the large-scale properties of physical systems. Starting with the introduction of the self-organized criticality in the late 80s, a number of physicists have tried to utilize this concept for explaining some aspects of the brain properties, such as memory and learnig. The observation of the neuronal avalanches in the early... 

Earthquakes are of self-organized critical phenomena, the phenomena that exhibit scaling behavior without tuning external parameters. A number of models have been proposed to describe such features of earthquakes, the most known one is the Burridge-Knopoff model. The Burridge-Knopof model is a spring-block system where the blocks slip on a plate which has friction and are attached through some other springs to a moving plate. Because of the moving plate the blocks become under increasing tension but do not move until the tension overcomes the static friction. As a result, the blocks will move and then stop repeatedly. These movements are avalanche-like and their intensity obeys a power-law...