Effective ergodicity breaking phase transition in a driven-dissipative system

We show that the Olami-Feder-Christensen model exhibits an effective ergodicity breaking transition as the noise is varied. Above the critical noise, the system is effectively ergodic because the time-averaged stress on each site converges to the global spatial average. In contrast, below the critical noise, the stress on individual sites becomes trapped in different limit cycles, and the system is not ergodic. To characterize this transition, we use ideas from the study of dynamical systems and compute recurrence plots and the recurrence rate. The order parameter is identified as the recurrence rate averaged over all sites and exhibits a jump at the critical noise. We also use ideas from percolation theory and analyze the clusters of failed sites to find numerical evidence that the transition, when approached from above, can be characterized by exponents that are consistent with hyperscaling.