We study the culling avalanches which occur after the “death” of a single randomly chosen site in a network where sites are unstable, and are culled, if they have coordination less than an integer parameter $m$. Avalanche distributions are presented for triangular and cubic lattices for values of $m$ where the associated bootstrap transitions are either first or second order. In second order cases, the culling avalanche distribution is found to be exponential, while in first order cases it follows a power law. We present an exact relation between culling avalanches and conventional bootstrap percolation and show that a relation proposed by Manna [Physica A 261, 351 (1998)] can be a good approximation for strongly first order bootstrap transitions but not for continuous bootstrap transitions.

• Received 2 August 2005
• Publisher error corrected 12 December 2005

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.72.066109