Return distributions in dog-flea model revisited

A recent study of coherent noise model for the system size independent case provides an exact relation between the exponent tau of avalanche size distribution and the q value of the appropriate q-Gaussian that fits the return distribution of the model. This relation is applied to Ehrenfest's historical dog-flea model by treating the fluctuations around the thermal equilibrium as avalanches. We provide a clear numerical evidence that the relation between the exponent tau of fluctuation length distribution and the q value of the appropriate q-Gaussian obeys this exact relation when the system size is large enough. This allows us to determine the value of the q-parameter a priori from one of the well known exponents of such dynamical systems. Furthermore, it is shown that the return distribution in dog-flea model gradually approaches q-Gaussian as the system size increases and this tendency can be analyzed by a well defined analytical expression. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.