We show through numerical simulation that fractal morphology appears at the end of the spontaneous evolution of the interface between a random system and a finite-etching solution. The appearance of this morphology is directly linked to the critical slowing-down of the reaction when the system is going towards a collective equilibrium. The process is explained in terms of gradient percolation theory.( * ) Unité associée du CNRS No. 1254.

The cytoplasm of a living cell is crowded with several macromolecules of different shapes and sizes. Molecular diffusion in such a medium becomes anomalous due to the presence of macromolecules and diffusivity is expected to decrease with increase in macromolecular crowding. Moreover, many cellular processes are dependent on molecular diffusion in the cell cytosol. The enzymatic reaction rate has been shown to be affected by the presence of such macromolecules. A simple numerical model is proposed here based on percolation and diffusion in disordered systems to study the effect of macromolecular crowding on the enzymatic reaction rates. The model qualitatively explains some of the experimental observations.

Rotational constraint representing a local external bias generally has a nontrivial effect on the critical behavior of lattice statistical models in equilibrium critical phenomena. In order to study the effect of rotational bias in an out-of-equilibrium situation like self-organized criticality, a two state "quasideterministic" rotational sandpile model is developed here imposing rotational constraint on the flow of sand grains. An extended set of critical exponents are estimated to characterize the avalanche properties at the nonequilibrium steady state of the model. The probability distribution functions are found to obey usual finite size scaling supported by negative time autocorrelation between the toppling waves. The model exhibits characteristics of both deterministic and stochastic sandpile models.

A dissipative sandpile model (DSM) is constructed and studied on small world networks (SWN). SWNs are generated adding extra links between two arbitrary sites of a two dimensional square lattice with different shortcut densities φ. Three different regimes are identified as regular lattice (RL) for φ 2 −12 , SWN for 2 −12 < φ < 0.1 and random network (RN) for φ ≥ 0.1. In the RL regime, the sandpile dynamics is characterized by usual Bak, Tang, Weisenfeld (BTW) type correlated scaling whereas in the RN regime it is characterized by the mean field (MF) scaling. On SWN, both the scaling behaviors are found to coexist. Small compact avalanches below certain characteristic size sc are found to belong to the BTW universality class whereas large, sparse avalanches above sc are found to belong to the MF universality class. A scaling theory for the coexistence of two scaling forms on SWN is developed and numerically verified. Though finite size scaling (FSS) is not valid for DSM on RL as well as on SWN, it is found to be valid on RN for the same model. FSS on RN is appeared to be an outcome of super diffusive sand transport and uncorrelated toppling waves.

Directed spiral percolation (DSP), percolation under both directional and rotational constraints, is studied on the triangular lattice in two dimensions (2D). The results are compared with that of the 2D square lattice. Clusters generated in this model are generally rarefied and have chiral dangling ends on both the square and triangular lattices. It is found that the clusters are more compact and less anisotropic on the triangular lattice than on the square lattice. The elongation of the clusters is in a different direction than the imposed directional constraint on both the lattices.The values of some of the critical exponents and fractal dimension are found considerably different on the two lattices. The DSP model then exhibits a breakdown of universality in 2D between the square and triangular lattices. The values of the critical exponents obtained for the triangular lattice are not only different from that of the square lattice but also different form other percolation models.