Sandpile Models in the Large

This contribution is a review of the deep and powerful connection between the large-scale properties of critical systems and their description in terms of a field theory. Although largely applicable to many other models, the details of this connection are illustrated in the class of two-dimensional Abelian sandpile models. Bulk and boundary height variables, spanning tree–related observables, boundary conditions, and dissipation are all discussed in this context and found to have a proper match in the field theoretic description.

On the sandpile model of modified wheels II

We investigate the abelian sandpile group on modified wheels {\hat{W}}_{n} by using a variant of the dollar game as described in [N. L. Biggs, Chip-Firing and the critical group of a graph, J. Algebr. Comb. 9 (1999), 25–45]. The complete structure of the sandpile group on a class of graphs is given in this paper. In particular, it is shown that the sandpile group on {\hat{W}}_{n} is a direct product of two cyclic subgroups generated by some special configurations. More precisely, the sandpile group on {\hat{W}}_{n} is the direct product of two cyclic subgroups of order {a}_{n} and 3{a}_{n} for n even and of order {a}_{n} and 2{a}_{n} for n odd, respectively.

Permutation Graphs and the Abelian Sandpile Model, Tiered Trees and Non-Ambiguous Binary Trees

A permutation graph is a graph whose edges are given by inversions of a permutation. We study the Abelian sandpile model (ASM) on such graphs. We exhibit a bijection between recurrent configurations of the ASM on permutation graphs and the tiered trees introduced by Dugan et al. [10]. This bijection allows certain parameters of the recurrent configurations to be read on the corresponding tree. In particular, we show that the level of a recurrent configuration can be interpreted as the external activity of the corresponding tree, so that the bijection exhibited provides a new proof of a famous result linking the level polynomial of the ASM to the ubiquitous Tutte polynomial. We show that the set of minimal recurrent configurations is in bijection with the set of complete non-ambiguous binary trees introduced by Aval et al. [2], and introduce a multi-rooted generalization of these that we show to correspond to all recurrent configurations. In the case of permutations with a single descent, we recover some results from the case of Ferrers graphs presented in [11], while we also recover results of Perkinson et al. [16] in the case of threshold graphs.