Study of spatio-temporal correlations in a self-organized critical system

Self-organized critical (SOC) systems exhibit characteristics which are believed to model various natural processes, earthquakes being one of them. Although the separate temporal (time-dependent) and spatial correlations in such systems are such that the size and/or the time of the next occurrence of an event cannot be predicted apart from a distribution, correlations do seem to exist between the spatial positions and the time intervals of events. (A big quake is more likely at a place which has been silent for a long time.) Other types of correlations are also possible, for example correlations suggested by preliminary and after shocks before and after a big event. The paper by Yang, Cai, and Zhou (Phys. Rev. E61, 7243 (2000)) is an example which studies these correlations in a particular type of SOC model.

The work to be carried out in this project involves familiarization with a number of SOC models, construction of a computer program to simulate a model, and extract statistics in order to analyze the spatio-temporal correlations.

The student is expected to have reasonably good computational skills. (Improvement of computational skills should also be seen as a part of the aims of this project.)