title: Self-Organized Bistability Associated with First-Order Phase Transitions.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Electromagnetismo y Física de la Materia e Instituto Carlos I de Física Teórica y Computacional, Universidad de Granada, Granada E-18071, Spain.|Dipartimento di Fisica e Scienza della Terra, Università di Parma, via G.P. Usberti, 7/A-43124 Parma, Italy.|INFN, Gruppo Collegato di Parma, via G.P. Usberti, 7/A-43124 Parma, Italy.
authors.forename: Serena
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: di Santo
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisica e Scienza della Terra, Università di Parma, via G.P. Usberti, 7/A-43124 Parma, Italy.|INFN, Gruppo Collegato di Parma, via G.P. Usberti, 7/A-43124 Parma, Italy.
authors.forename: Raffaella
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Burioni
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisica e Scienza della Terra, Università di Parma, via G.P. Usberti, 7/A-43124 Parma, Italy.|IMEM-CNR, Parco Area delle Scienze, 37/A-43124 Parma, Italy.
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Vezzani
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Electromagnetismo y Física de la Materia e Instituto Carlos I de Física Teórica y Computacional, Universidad de Granada, Granada E-18071, Spain.
authors.forename: Miguel A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Muñoz