Introduction to the sandpile model

This article is based on a talk given by one of us (EVI) at the conference “StatPhys-Taipei-1997”. It overviews the exact results in the theory of the sandpile model and discusses briefly the yet unsolved problem of calculation of avalanche distribution exponents. The key ingredients include the analogy with the critical reaction–diffusion system, the spanning tree representation of height configurations and the decomposition of the avalanche process into waves of topplings.