Self-organized criticality in fragmenting

Liquid-Gas Phase Transition in Nuclear Multifragmentation

“…But the power law is no longer taken as the 'proof' of criticality. There are many systems that exhibit this sort of power law: mass distributions of asteroids in the solar system, debris from the crushing of basalt pellets [86] and the fragmentation of frozen potatoes [87]. In fact, the lattice gas model which has been used a great deal for calculations of phase transitions and multifragmentation in nuclei [88,89] gives a power law at the critical point, on the coexistence curve (that is a first order phase transition provided the freeze-out density is less than the critical density) and also along a line in the T − ρ plane away from the coexistence curve.…”

Analyzing fragmentation of simple fluids with percolation theory

“…Most theoretical efforts made to understand fragmentation apply only to specific objects or, on the contrary, concern simple models with few links with reality [1]. Moreover, experimental data [2][3][4][5] are rather sparse and often the experimental conditions are ill defined. As a consequence, the question of the possible existence of universal fragmentation mechanisms remains an open problem [6].…”

Crackling noise in fractional percolation

“…Fragmentation processes, where homogeneous parts break up into smaller ones, are ubiquitous and have been studied intensely. The applications range from disintegration of atomic nuclei, and the fragmentation of glass rods, to fracture in large-scale systems [13][14][15][16][17][18][19] . An important observation is that the size of the fragments are of the same order of magnitude as the parent pieces.…”