No Arabic abstract
We say that a finite asynchronous cellular automaton (or more generally, any sequential dynamical system) is pi-independent if its set of periodic points are independent of the order that the local functions are applied. In this case, the local functions permute the periodic points, and these permutations generate the dynamics group. We have previously shown that exactly 104 of the possible 256 cellular automaton rules are pi-independent. In this article, we classify the periodic states of these systems and describe their dynamics groups, which are quotients of Coxeter groups. The dynamics groups provide information about permissible dynamics as a function of update sequence and, as such, connect discrete dynamical systems, group theory, and algebraic combinatorics in a new and interesting way. We conclude with a discussion of numerous open problems and directions for future research.
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 investigate the mean dimension of a cellular automaton (CA for short) with a compact non-discrete space of states. A formula for the mean dimension is established for (near) strongly permutative, permutative algebraic and unit one-dimensional automata. In higher dimensions, a CA permutative algebraic or having a spaceship has infinite mean dimension. However, building on Meyerovitchs example, we give an example of algebraic surjective cellular automaton with positive finite mean dimension.
We consider a left permutive cellular automaton Phi, with no memory and positive anticipation, defined on the space of all doubly infinite sequences with entries from a finite alphabet. For each such automaton that is not one-to-one, there is a dense set of points X (which is large in another sense too) such that the Phi-orbit closure of each x in X is topologically conjugate to an odometer (the ``+1 map on a projective limit of finite cyclic groups). We identify this odometer in several cases.
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.
Classical reversible cellular automata (CAs), which describe the discrete-time dynamics of classical degrees of freedom in a finite state-space, can exhibit exact, nonthermal quantum eigenstates despite being classically chaotic. We show that every classical CA defines a family of generically non-integrable, periodically-driven (Floquet) quantum dynamics with exact, nonthermal eigenstates. These Floquet dynamics are nonergodic in the sense that certain product states on a periodic classical orbit fail to thermalize, while generic initial states thermalize as expected in a quantum chaotic system. We demonstrate that some signatures of these effects can be probed in quantum simulators based on Rydberg atoms in the blockade regime. These results establish classical CAs as parent models for a class of quantum chaotic systems with rare nonthermal eigenstates.