Avalanche behavior in the dynamics of chemical reactions

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