No Arabic abstract
If a cellular automaton (CA) is started with a single ON cell, how many cells will be ON after n generations? For certain odd-rule CAs, including Rule 150, Rule 614, and Fredkins Replicator, the answer can be found by using the combination of a new transformation of sequences, the run length transform, and some delicate scissor cuts. Several other CAs are also discussed, although the analysis becomes more difficult as the patterns become more intricate.
An odd-rule cellular automaton (CA) is defined by specifying a neighborhood for each cell, with the rule that a cell turns ON if it is in the neighborhood of an odd number of ON cells at the previous generation, and otherwise turns OFF. We classify all the odd-rule CAs defined by neighborhoods which are subsets of a 3 X 3 grid of square cells. There are 86 different CAs modulo trivial symmetries. When we consider only the different sequences giving the number of ON cells after n generations, the number drops to 48, two of which are the Moore and von Neumann CAs. This classification is carried out by using the meta-algorithm described in an earlier paper to derive the generating functions for the 86 sequences, and then removing duplicates. The fastest-growing of these CAs is neither the Fredkin nor von Neumann neighborhood, but instead is one defined by Odd-rule 365, which turns ON almost 75% of all possible cells.
In this paper we study the family of freezing cellular automata (FCA) in the context of asynchronous updating schemes. A cellular automaton is called freezing if there exists an order of its states, and the transitions are only allowed to go from a lower to a higher state. A cellular automaton is asynchronous if at each time-step only one cell is updated. Given configuration, we say that a cell is unstable if there exists a sequential updating scheme that changes its state. In this context, we define the problem AsyncUnstability, which consists in deciding if a cell is unstable or not. In general AsyncUnstability is in NP, and we study in which cases we can solve the problem by a more efficient algorithm. We begin showing that AsyncUnstability is in NL for any one-dimensional FCA. Then we focus on the family of life-like freezing CA (LFCA), which is a family of two-dimensional two-state FCA that generalize the freezing version of the game of life, known as life without death. We study the complexity of AsyncUnstability for all LFCA in the triangular and square grids, showing that almost all of them can be solved in NC, except for one rule for which the problem is NP-complete.
We present an intuitive formalism for implementing cellular automata on arbitrary topologies. By that means, we identify a symmetry operation in the class of elementary cellular automata. Moreover, we determine the subset of topologically sensitive elementary cellular automata and find that the overall number of complex patterns decreases under increasing neighborhood size in regular graphs. As exemplary applications, we apply the formalism to complex networks and compare the potential of scale-free graphs and metabolic networks to generate complex dynamics.
We compare several definitions for number-conserving cellular automata that we prove to be equivalent. A necessary and sufficient condition for cas to be number-conserving is proved. Using this condition, we give a linear-time algorithm to decide number-conservation. The dynamical behavior of number-conserving cas is studied and a classification that focuses on chaoticity is given.
We study sources of isomorphisms of additive cellular automata on finite groups (called index-group). It is shown that many isomorphisms (called regular) of automata are reducible to the isomorphisms of underlying algebraic structures (such as the index-group, monoid of automata rules, and its subgroup of reversible elements). However for some groups there exist not regular automata isomorphisms. A complete description of linear automorphisms of the monoid is obtained. These automorphisms cover the most part of all automata isomorphisms for small groups and are represented by reversible matrices M such that for any index-group circulant C the matrix M^{-1}CM is an index-group circulant.