We investigate the avalanche dynamics of the Bak-Tang-Wiesenfeld sandpile model on scale-free (SF) networks, where the threshold height of each node is distributed heterogeneously, given as its own degree. We find that the avalanche size distribution follows a power law with an exponent $\tau$. Applying the theory of the multiplicative branching process, we obtain the exponent $\tau$ and the dynamic exponent $z$ as a function of the degree exponent $\gamma$ of SF networks as $\tau =\gamma /(\gamma -1)$ and $z=(\gamma -1)/(\gamma -2)$ in the range $2<\gamma <3$ and the mean-field values $\tau =1.5$ and $z=2.0$ for $\gamma >3$, with a logarithmic correction at $\gamma =3$. The analytic solution supports our numerical simulation results. We also consider the case of a uniform threshold, finding that the two exponents reduce to the mean-field ones.

• Received 11 May 2003

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.148701