On surjunctive monoids

A monoid $M$ is called surjunctive if every injective cellular automata with finite alphabet over $M$ is surjective. We show that all finite monoids, all finitely generated commutative monoids, all cancellative commutative monoids, all residually finite monoids, all finitely generated linear monoids, and all cancellative one-sided amenable monoids are surjunctive. We also prove that every limit of marked surjunctive monoids is itself surjunctive. On the other hand, we show that the bicyclic monoid and, more generally, all monoids containing a submonoid isomorphic to the bicyclic monoid are non-surjunctive

Generating infinite monoids of cellular automata

For a group $G$ and a set $A$, let $\text{End}(A^G)$ be the monoid of all cellular automata over $A^G$, and let $\text{Aut}(A^G)$ be its group of units. By establishing a characterisation of surjunctuve groups in terms of the monoid $\text{End}(A^G)$, we prove that the rank of $\text{End}(A^G)$ (i.e. the smallest cardinality of a generating set) is equal to the rank of $\text{Aut}(A^G)$ plus the relative rank of $\text{Aut}(A^G)$ in $\text{End}(A^G)$, and that the latter is infinite when $G$ has an infinite decreasing chain of normal subgroups of finite index, condition which is satisfied, for example, for any infinite residually finite group. Moreover, when $A=V$ is a vector space over a field $\mathbb{F}$, we study the monoid $\text{End}_{\mathbb{F}}(V^G)$ of all linear cellular automata over $V^G$ and its group of units $\text{Aut}_{\mathbb{F}}(V^G)$. We show that if $G$ is an indicable group and $V$ is finite-dimensional, then $\text{End}_{\mathbb{F}}(V^G)$ is not finitely generated; however, for any finitely generated indicable group $G$, the group $\text{Aut}_{\mathbb{F}}(\mathbb{F}^G)$ is finitely generated if and only if $\mathbb{F}$ is finite.Comment: 11 page

On Residually Finite Semigroups of Cellullar Automata

We prove that if $M$ is a monoid and $A$ a finite set with more than one element, then the residual finiteness of $M$ is equivalent to that of the monoid consisting of all cellular automata over $M$ with alphabet $A$

On sofic monoids

We investigate the notion of soficity for monoids. A group is sofic as a group if and only if it is sofic as a monoid. All finite monoids, all commutative monoids, all free monoids, all cancellative one-sided amenable monoids, all multiplicative monoids of matrices over a field, and all monoids obtained by adjoining an identity element to a semigroup without identity element are sofic. On the other hand, although the question of the existence of a non-sofic group remains open, we prove that the bicyclic monoid is not sofic. This shows that there exist finitely presented amenable inverse monoids that are non-sofic.Comment: We have corrected a small mistake in (and then suitably refrmulated) the statement of Theorem 6.1 (we needed the "Left-cancellative" hypothesis on M. It will appear in SEMIGRUOP FORU

The algebraic entropy of one-dimensional finitary linear cellular automata

The aim of this paper is to present one-dimensional finitary linear cellular automata $S$ on $\mathbb Z_m$ from an algebraic point of view. Among various other results, we: (i) show that the Pontryagin dual $\widehat S$ of $S$ is a classical one-dimensional linear cellular automaton $T$ on $\mathbb Z_m$; (ii) give several equivalent conditions for $S$ to be invertible with inverse a finitary linear cellular automaton; (iii) compute the algebraic entropy of $S$, which coincides with the topological entropy of $T=\widehat S$ by the so-called Bridge Theorem. In order to better understand and describe the entropy we introduce the degree $\mathrm{deg}(S)$ and $\mathrm{deg}(T)$ of $S$ and $T$.Comment: 21 page

Introduction to Sofic and Hyperlinear groups and Connes' embedding conjecture

Sofic and hyperlinear groups are the countable discrete groups that can be approximated in a suitable sense by finite symmetric groups and groups of unitary matrices. These notions turned out to be very deep and fruitful, and stimulated in the last 15 years an impressive amount of research touching several seemingly distant areas of mathematics including geometric group theory, operator algebras, dynamical systems, graph theory, and more recently even quantum information theory. Several longstanding conjectures that are still open for arbitrary groups were settled in the case of sofic or hyperlinear groups. These achievements aroused the interest of an increasing number of researchers into some fundamental questions about the nature of these approximation properties. Many of such problems are to this day still open such as, outstandingly: Is there any countable discrete group that is not sofic or hyperlinear? A similar pattern can be found in the study of II_1 factors. In this case the famous conjecture due to Connes (commonly known as the Connes embedding conjecture) that any II_1 factor can be approximated in a suitable sense by matrix algebras inspired several breakthroughs in the understanding of II_1 factors, and stands out today as one of the major open problems in the field. The aim of these notes is to present in a uniform and accessible way some cornerstone results in the study of sofic and hyperlinear groups and the Connes embedding conjecture. The presentation is nonetheless self contained and accessible to any student or researcher with a graduate level mathematical background. An appendix by V. Pestov provides a pedagogically new introduction to the concepts of ultrafilters, ultralimits, and ultraproducts for those mathematicians who are not familiar with them, and aiming to make these concepts appear very natural.Comment: 157 pages, with an appendix by Vladimir Pesto

Subshifts with Simple Cellular Automata

A subshift is a set of infinite one- or two-way sequences over a fixed finite set, defined by a set of forbidden patterns. In this thesis, we study subshifts in the topological setting, where the natural morphisms between them are ones defined by a (spatially uniform) local rule. Endomorphisms of subshifts are called cellular automata, and we call the set of cellular automata on a subshift its endomorphism monoid. It is known that the set of all sequences (the full shift) allows cellular automata with complex dynamical and computational properties. We are interested in subshifts that do not support such cellular automata. In particular, we study countable subshifts, minimal subshifts and subshifts with additional universal algebraic structure that cellular automata need to respect, and investigate certain criteria of ‘simplicity’ of the endomorphism monoid, for each of them. In the case of countable subshifts, we concentrate on countable sofic shifts, that is, countable subshifts defined by a finite state automaton. We develop some general tools for studying cellular automata on such subshifts, and show that nilpotency and periodicity of cellular automata are decidable properties, and positive expansivity is impossible. Nevertheless, we also prove various undecidability results, by simulating counter machines with cellular automata. We prove that minimal subshifts generated by primitive Pisot substitutions only support virtually cyclic automorphism groups, and give an example of a Toeplitz subshift whose automorphism group is not finitely generated. In the algebraic setting, we study the centralizers of CA, and group and lattice homomorphic CA. In particular, we obtain results about centralizers of symbol permutations and bipermutive CA, and their connections with group structures.Siirretty Doriast