Context: Indian theoretical physicist Deepak Dhar has been awarded the ICTP Dirac Medal for contributions to statistical physics, particularly the theory of Abelian sandpiles. He is the second Indian, after Ashoke Sen, to receive the honour.
Explanation
- The ICTP Dirac Medal, instituted in 1985, is awarded annually by the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste, Italy, for outstanding contributions to theoretical physics.
- It is named after Paul A.M. Dirac, a Nobel laureate and pioneer of quantum mechanics, and is announced on his birthday.
- The medal is generally not awarded to Nobel, Fields Medal or Wolf Prize laureates.
- Abelian sandpile model, developed by Dhar and collaborators, mathematically describes self-organised criticality (SOC).
- SOC explains how complex systems naturally evolve towards a critical state, where small disturbances can produce events of widely varying magnitude.
- Applications include modelling earthquakes, forest fires, neural activity and financial-market fluctuations.
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