Probability distribution of residence times of grains in models of ricepiles

Abstract

We study the probability distribution of residence time of a grain at a site, and its total residence time inside a pile, in different ricepile models. The tails of these distributions are dominated by the grains that get deeply buried in the pile. We show that, for a pile of size $L$, the probabilities that the residence time at a site or the total residence time is greater than $t$, both decay as $1/t(\ln t)^x$ for $L^ω \ll t \ll \exp(L^γ)$ where $γ$ is an exponent $ \ge 1$, and values of $x$ and $ω$ in the two cases are different. In the Oslo ricepile model we find that the probability that the residence time $T_i$ at a site $i$ being greater than or equal to $t$, is a non-monotonic function of $L$ for a fixed $t$ and does not obey simple scaling. For model in $d$ dimensions, we show that the probability of minimum slope configuration in the steady state, for large $L$, varies as $\exp(-κL^{d+2})$ where $κ$ is a constant, and hence $ γ= d+2$.