Extremal Optimization - Relation To Self-organized Criticality

Relation To Self-organized Criticality

Self-organized criticality (SOC) is a statistical physics concept to describe a class of dynamical systems that have a critical point as an attractor. Specifically, these are non-equilibrium systems that evolve through avalanches of change and dissipations that reach up to the highest scales of the system. SOC is said to govern the dynamics behind some natural systems that have these burst-like phenomena including landscape formation, earthquakes, evolution, and the granular dynamics of rice and sand piles. Of special interest here is the Bak-Sneppen model of SOC, which is able to describe evolution via punctuated equilibrium (extinction events) - thus modelling evolution as a self-organised critical process.