Sandpiles subjected to sinusoidal drive.

Abstract

This paper considers a sandpile model subjected to a sinusoidal external drive with the period T. We develop a theoretical model for the Green's function in a large T limit, which predicts that the avalanches are anisotropic and elongated in the oscillation direction. We track the problem numerically and show that the system additionally shows a regime where the avalanches are elongated in the perpendicular direction with respect to the oscillations. We find a crossover between these two regimes. The power spectrum of avalanche size and the grains wasted from the parallel and perpendicular directions are studied. These functions show power-law behavior in terms of the frequency with exponents, which run with T.