  Let \Lambda be a finite subset of Z^d. We study the following sandpile model
on \Lambda. The height at any given vertex x of \Lambda is a positive real
number, and additions are uniformly distributed on some interval [a,b], which
is a subset of [0,1]. The threshold value is 1; when the height at a given
vertex exceeds 1, it topples, that is, its height is reduced by 1, and the
heights of all its neighbours in \Lambda increase by 1/2d. We first establish
that the uniform measure \mu on the so called "allowed configurations" is
invariant under the dynamics. When a < b, we show with coupling ideas that
starting from any initial configuration of heights, the process converges in
distribution to \mu, which therefore is the unique invariant measure for the
process. When a = b, that is, when the addition amount is non-random, and a is
rational, it is still the case that \mu is the unique invariant probability
measure, but in this case we use random ergodic theory to prove this; this
proof proceeds in a very different way. Indeed, the coupling approach cannot
work in this case since we also show the somewhat surprising fact that when a =
b is rational, the process does not converge in distribution at all starting
from any initial configuration.
