Interoccurrence times in the Bak-Tang-Wiesenfeld sandpile model: a comparison with the observed statistics of solar flares.
A sequence of bursts observed in an intermittent time series may be caused by a single avalanche, even though these bursts appear as distinct events when noise and/or instrument resolution impose a detection threshold. In the Bak-Tang-Wiesenfeld sandpile, the statistics of quiet times between bursts switches from Poissonian to scale invariant on raising the threshold for detecting instantaneous activity, since each zero-threshold avalanche breaks into a hierarchy of correlated bursts. Calibrating the model with the time resolution of GOES data, qualitative agreement with the interoccurrence time statistics of solar flares at different intensity thresholds is found.
Paczuski
Maya
M
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Canada.
Boettcher
Stefan
S
Baiesi
Marco
M