Testing the Universality of Self-Organized Criticality in Galactic, Extra-Galactic, and Black-Hole Systems

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Aschwanden, Markus, Gogus, Ersin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866910727402422272
author Aschwanden, Markus
Gogus, Ersin
author_facet Aschwanden, Markus
Gogus, Ersin
contents In this study we are testing whether the power law slopes ($α_F$, $α_E$) of fluxes $(F)$, fluences or energies $(E)$ are universal in their size distributions, $N(F) \propto F^{-α_F}$ and $N(E) \propto E^{-α_E}$, in astrophysical observations of galactic, extragalactic, and black-hole systems. This is a test of fundamental importance for self-organized criticality (SOC) systems. The test decides whether (i) power laws are a natural consequence of the scale-freeness and inherent universality of SOC systems, or (ii) if they depend on more complex physical scaling laws. The former criterion allows quantitative predictions of the power law-like size distributions, while the later criterion requires individual physical modeling for each SOC variable and data set. Our statistical test, carried out with 61 published data sets, yields strong support for the former option, which implies that observed power laws can simply be derived from the scale-freeness and do not require specific physical models to understand their statistical distributions. The observations show a mean and standard deviation of $α_F=1.78\pm0.29$ for SOC fluxes, and $α_E=1.66\pm0.22$ for SOC fluences, and thus are consistent with the prediction of the fractal-diffusive SOC model, with $α_F=1.80$ and $α_E=1.67$.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_03499
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Testing the Universality of Self-Organized Criticality in Galactic, Extra-Galactic, and Black-Hole Systems
Aschwanden, Markus
Gogus, Ersin
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Astrophysics of Galaxies
In this study we are testing whether the power law slopes ($α_F$, $α_E$) of fluxes $(F)$, fluences or energies $(E)$ are universal in their size distributions, $N(F) \propto F^{-α_F}$ and $N(E) \propto E^{-α_E}$, in astrophysical observations of galactic, extragalactic, and black-hole systems. This is a test of fundamental importance for self-organized criticality (SOC) systems. The test decides whether (i) power laws are a natural consequence of the scale-freeness and inherent universality of SOC systems, or (ii) if they depend on more complex physical scaling laws. The former criterion allows quantitative predictions of the power law-like size distributions, while the later criterion requires individual physical modeling for each SOC variable and data set. Our statistical test, carried out with 61 published data sets, yields strong support for the former option, which implies that observed power laws can simply be derived from the scale-freeness and do not require specific physical models to understand their statistical distributions. The observations show a mean and standard deviation of $α_F=1.78\pm0.29$ for SOC fluxes, and $α_E=1.66\pm0.22$ for SOC fluences, and thus are consistent with the prediction of the fractal-diffusive SOC model, with $α_F=1.80$ and $α_E=1.67$.
title Testing the Universality of Self-Organized Criticality in Galactic, Extra-Galactic, and Black-Hole Systems
topic High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Astrophysics of Galaxies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.03499