Effects of turbulent environment and random noise on self-organized critical behavior: Universality versus...

Self-organized criticality in the Hwa-Kardar model of a "running sandpile" [Phys. Rev. Lett. 62, 1813 (1989)10.1103/PhysRevLett.62.1813; Phys. Rev. A 45, 7002 (1992)10.1103/PhysRevA.45.7002] with a turbulent motion of the environment taken into account is studied with the field theoretic renormalization group (RG). The turbulent flow is modeled by the synthetic d-dimensional generalization of the anisotropic Gaussian velocity ensemble with finite correlation time, introduced by Avellaneda and Majda [Commun. Math. Phys. 131, 381 (1990)10.1007/BF02161420; Commun. Math. Phys. 146, 139 (1992)10.1007/BF02099212]. The Hwa-Kardar model with time-independent (spatially quenched) random noise is considered alongside the original model with white noise. The aim of the present paper is to explore fixed points of the RG equations which determine the possible types of universality classes (regimes of critical behavior of the system) and critical dimensions of the measurable quantities. Our calculations demonstrate that influence of the type of random noise is extremely large: in contrast to the case of white noise where the system possesses three fixed points, the case of spatially quenched noise involves four fixed points with overlapping stability regions. This means that in the latter case the critical behavior of the system depends not only on the global parameters of the system, which is the usual case, but also on the initial values of the charges (coupling constants) of the system. These initial conditions determine the specific fixed point which will be reached by the RG flow. Since now the critical properties of the system are not defined strictly by its parameters, the situation may be interpreted as a universality violation. Such systems are not forbidden, but they are rather rare. It is especially interesting that the same model without turbulent motion of the environment does not predict this nonuniversal behavior and demonstrates the usual one with prescribed universality classes instead [J. Stat. Phys. 178, 392 (2020)10.1007/s10955-019-02436-8].