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Crackling noise

Nature volume 410, pages 242–250 (2001)Cite this article

Abstract

Crackling noise arises when a system responds to changing external conditions through discrete, impulsive events spanning a broad range of sizes. A wide variety of physical systems exhibiting crackling noise have been studied, from earthquakes on faults to paper crumpling. Because these systems exhibit regular behaviour over a huge range of sizes, their behaviour is likely to be independent of microscopic and macroscopic details, and progress can be made by the use of simple models. The fact that these models and real systems can share the same behaviour on many scales is called universality. We illustrate these ideas by using results for our model of crackling noise in magnets, explaining the use of the renormalization group and scaling collapses, and we highlight some continuing challenges in this still-evolving field.

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Figure 1: The Earth crackles.
Figure 2: Magnets crackle73,74,75,76.
Figure 3: Self-similarity.
Figure 4: Renormalization-group flows.
Figure 5: Flows in the space of earthquake models.
Figure 6: Attracting fixed point.
Figure 7: Scaling of avalanche shapes.
Figure 8: Critical exponents in various dimensions.
Figure 9: Comparing experiments with theory: critical exponents.
Figure 10: Fractal spatial structure of an avalanche74.

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Acknowledgements

The perspective on this field described in this paper grew out of a collaboration with M. Kuntz. We thank A. Mehta for supplying the data for Fig. 7b, and D. Dolgert, M. Newman, J.-P. Bouchaud, L. C. Krysac, D. Fisher and J. Thorpe for helpful comments and references. This work was supported by NSF grants, the Cornell Theory Center and IBM.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics, Clark Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, 14853-2501, New York, USA

    James P. Sethna

  2. Department of Physics, 1110 West Green Street

    Karin A. Dahmen

  3. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, 61801-3080, USA

    Karin A. Dahmen

  4. Cornell Theory Center, Frank H. T. Rhodes Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, 14853-3801, New York, USA

    Christopher R. Myers

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Sethna, J., Dahmen, K. & Myers, C. Crackling noise. Nature 410, 242–250 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35065675

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