Universal pulse shape scaling function and exponents: Critical test for avalanche models applied to Barkhausen noise

In order to test if the universal aspects of Barkhausen noise in magnetic materials can be predicted from recent variants of the nonequilibrium zero-temperature Random Field Ising Model, we perform a quantitative study of the universal scaling function derived from the Barkhausen pulse shape in simulations and experiment. Through data collapses and scaling relations we determine the critical exponents tau and 1/sigmanuz in both simulation and experiment. Although we find agreement in the critical exponents, we find differences between theoretical and experimental pulse shape scaling functions as well as between different experiments.