Scale-free nonlinear conservative cascades and their stationary spectra

Abstract

We show that a variety of complex processes can be viewed from the unified standpoint of scale-free nonlinear conservative cascades. Examples include certain turbulence models, percolation, cluster coagulation (aggregation) and fragmentation, `coarse-grained' forest fire model of self-organized criticality, and scale-free network growth. We classify such cascades by the values of three indices, and show how power-law steady spectra may arise. The power-law exponent is proven to depend only on the values of the three indices by a simple algebraic formula.