Scale-free behavior and universality in random fragmentation and aggregation

Two distinct mechanisms underlying the existence of power-law distributions are presented: the distribution is stationary under the process of merging and splitting of classes and the distribution of the entities under study is invariant under changes of the classification scheme. We provide an expl...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics, 2004-03, Vol.69 (3 Pt 2), p.036123-036123, Article 036123
Main Authors: Banavar, Jayanth R, De los Rios, Paolo, Flammini, Alessandro, Holter, Neal S, Maritan, Amos
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Two distinct mechanisms underlying the existence of power-law distributions are presented: the distribution is stationary under the process of merging and splitting of classes and the distribution of the entities under study is invariant under changes of the classification scheme. We provide an explanation for the ubiquitous inverse n relationship in the species abundance relationship in ecology and the 1/n(2) distribution of company sizes based on the minimum impact principle.
ISSN:1539-3755
1550-2376
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevE.69.036123