Self organized criticality in Hamiltonian spin systems: intriguingly ordinary or ordinarily intriguing

Self organized criticality SOC refers to the tendency of dissipative systems to drive themselves into a scale invariant critical state without any parameter tuning These phenomena are of crucial importance because fractal objects displaying SOC are found everywhere e g in earthquakes the structure of dried out rivers the meandering of sea coasts or in galactic clusters Understanding its origin however represents a major unresolved puzzle Pioneering work in the 1980s provided insights into the possible ori