The Energy-Duration Relationship in Astrophysical Self-Organized Criticality Systems

preprint2026arXivOpen access

Abstract

Scaling laws in astrophysical systems that involve the energy, the geometry, and the spatio-temporal evolution, provide the theoretical framework for physical models of energy dissipation processes. A leading model is the standard fractal-diffusive self-organized criticality (FD-SOC) model, which is built on four fundamental assumptions: (i) the dimensionality d=3d=3, (ii) the fractal dimension DV=d−1/2=2.5D_V=d-1/2=2.5, (iii) classical diffusion L∝T(1/2)L \propto T^{(1/2)}, and (iv) the proportionality of the dissipated energy to the fractal volume E∝VE \propto V. Based on these assumptions, the FD-SOC model predicts a scaling law of T∝Ek∝E(4/5)=E0.8T \propto E^k \propto E^{(4/5)} = E^{0.8}. On the observational side, we find empirical scaling laws of T∝E0.81±0.03T \propto E^{0.81\pm0.03} by Peng et al.~(2023) and T∝E0.86±0.03T \propto E^{0.86\pm0.03} by Araujo \& Valio (2021) that are self-consistent with the theoretical prediction of the FD-SOC model. However, cases with a small time range $q_T = \log{(T_{max}/T_{min})} \lapprox 2$ have large statistical uncertainties and systematic errors, which produces smaller scaling law exponents (k≈0.3,...,0.6k \approx 0.3, ..., 0.6) as a consequence. The close correlation of the scaling exponent kk with the truncation bias qTq_T implies that the dispersion of k-values is an observational effect, rather than a physical property.

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