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Chaos and self-organized criticality: Deterministic and stochastic

PDE and Applied Math Seminar

Speaker: Donald L. Turcotte, UC Davis, Geology
Location: 1147 MSB
Start time: Thu, Oct 16 2008, 11:00AM

Concepts of deterministic chaos were developed for low-order maps (the logistic map) and low order sets of equations (the Lorenz equations). Concepts of self-organized criticality evolved from large-scale simulations, i.e. the sand-pile model and the forest-fire model (both stochastic). Slider-block models bridge the gap between the two concepts. Two slider blocks exhibit classical deterministic chaos. Large numbers of slider blocks exhibit self-organized criticality. This behavior will be explained in terms of a turbulent-like cascade.