Avalanche behavior in the dynamics of chemical reactions - art. no. 178303

Sudden bursts of chemical activity, displaying avalanchelike behavior, have been observed in reactions between metals and liquid electrolytes by measu ring the time-dependent chemomagnetic fields with a high-T-c SQUID. The obs erved intermittent chemomagnetic field pulses exhibit power-law behavior in the distributions of peak sizes, noise spectra, and return-time distributi ons. Such power-law behavior provides evidence for self-organized criticali ty occurring in the form of "chemical avalanches" over a wide range of size and time scales.