Conjugacy of one-dimensional one-sided cellular automata is undecidable

Two cellular automata are strongly conjugate if there exists a shift-commuting conjugacy between them. We prove that the following two sets of pairs $(F,G)$ of one-dimensional one-sided cellular automata over a full shift are recursively inseparable: (i) pairs where $F$ has strictly larger topological entropy than $G$, and (ii) pairs that are strongly conjugate and have zero topological entropy. Because there is no factor map from a lower entropy system to a higher entropy one, and there is no embedding of a higher entropy system into a lower entropy system, we also get as corollaries that the following decision problems are undecidable: Given two one-dimensional one-sided cellular automata $F$ and $G$ over a full shift: Are $F$ and $G$ conjugate? Is $F$ a factor of $G$? Is $F$ a subsystem of $G$? All of these are undecidable in both strong and weak variants (whether the homomorphism is required to commute with the shift or not, respectively). It also immediately follows that these results hold for one-dimensional two-sided cellular automata.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures, accepted for SOFSEM 201

Computational Processes and Incompleteness

We introduce a formal definition of Wolfram's notion of computational process based on cellular automata, a physics-like model of computation. There is a natural classification of these processes into decidable, intermediate and complete. It is shown that in the context of standard finite injury priority arguments one cannot establish the existence of an intermediate computational process

Turing degrees of limit sets of cellular automata

Cellular automata are discrete dynamical systems and a model of computation. The limit set of a cellular automaton consists of the configurations having an infinite sequence of preimages. It is well known that these always contain a computable point and that any non-trivial property on them is undecidable. We go one step further in this article by giving a full characterization of the sets of Turing degrees of cellular automata: they are the same as the sets of Turing degrees of effectively closed sets containing a computable point

Bulking II: Classifications of Cellular Automata

This paper is the second part of a series of two papers dealing with bulking: a way to define quasi-order on cellular automata by comparing space-time diagrams up to rescaling. In the present paper, we introduce three notions of simulation between cellular automata and study the quasi-order structures induced by these simulation relations on the whole set of cellular automata. Various aspects of these quasi-orders are considered (induced equivalence relations, maximum elements, induced orders, etc) providing several formal tools allowing to classify cellular automata

When--and how--can a cellular automaton be rewritten as a lattice gas?

Both cellular automata (CA) and lattice-gas automata (LG) provide finite algorithmic presentations for certain classes of infinite dynamical systems studied by symbolic dynamics; it is customary to use the term `cellular automaton' or `lattice gas' for the dynamic system itself as well as for its presentation. The two kinds of presentation share many traits but also display profound differences on issues ranging from decidability to modeling convenience and physical implementability. Following a conjecture by Toffoli and Margolus, it had been proved by Kari (and by Durand--Lose for more than two dimensions) that any invertible CA can be rewritten as an LG (with a possibly much more complex ``unit cell''). But until now it was not known whether this is possible in general for noninvertible CA--which comprise ``almost all'' CA and represent the bulk of examples in theory and applications. Even circumstantial evidence--whether in favor or against--was lacking. Here, for noninvertible CA, (a) we prove that an LG presentation is out of the question for the vanishingly small class of surjective ones. We then turn our attention to all the rest--noninvertible and nonsurjective--which comprise all the typical ones, including Conway's `Game of Life'. For these (b) we prove by explicit construction that all the one-dimensional ones are representable as LG, and (c) we present and motivate the conjecture that this result extends to any number of dimensions. The tradeoff between dissipation rate and structural complexity implied by the above results have compelling implications for the thermodynamics of computation at a microscopic scale.Comment: 16 page

On some one-sided dynamics of cellular automata

A dynamical system consists of a space of all possible world states and a transformation of said space. Cellular automata are dynamical systems where the space is a set of one- or two-way infinite symbol sequences and the transformation is defined by a homogenous local rule. In the setting of cellular automata, the geometry of the underlying space allows one to define one-sided variants of some dynamical properties; this thesis considers some such one-sided dynamics of cellular automata. One main topic are the dynamical concepts of expansivity and that of pseudo-orbit tracing property. Expansivity is a strong form of sensitivity to the initial conditions while pseudo-orbit tracing property is a type of approximability. For cellular automata we define one-sided variants of both of these concepts. We give some examples of cellular automata with these properties and prove, for example, that right-expansive cellular automata are chain-mixing. We also show that left-sided pseudo-orbit tracing property together with right-sided expansivity imply that a cellular automaton has the pseudo-orbit tracing property. Another main topic is conjugacy. Two dynamical systems are conjugate if, in a dynamical sense, they are the same system. We show that for one-sided cellular automata conjugacy is undecidable. In fact the result is stronger and shows that the relations of being a factor or a susbsystem are undecidable, too

A Survey of Cellular Automata: Types, Dynamics, Non-uniformity and Applications

Cellular automata (CAs) are dynamical systems which exhibit complex global behavior from simple local interaction and computation. Since the inception of cellular automaton (CA) by von Neumann in 1950s, it has attracted the attention of several researchers over various backgrounds and fields for modelling different physical, natural as well as real-life phenomena. Classically, CAs are uniform. However, non-uniformity has also been introduced in update pattern, lattice structure, neighborhood dependency and local rule. In this survey, we tour to the various types of CAs introduced till date, the different characterization tools, the global behaviors of CAs, like universality, reversibility, dynamics etc. Special attention is given to non-uniformity in CAs and especially to non-uniform elementary CAs, which have been very useful in solving several real-life problems.Comment: 43 pages; Under review in Natural Computin

Statistical Mechanics of Surjective Cellular Automata

Reversible cellular automata are seen as microscopic physical models, and their states of macroscopic equilibrium are described using invariant probability measures. We establish a connection between the invariance of Gibbs measures and the conservation of additive quantities in surjective cellular automata. Namely, we show that the simplex of shift-invariant Gibbs measures associated to a Hamiltonian is invariant under a surjective cellular automaton if and only if the cellular automaton conserves the Hamiltonian. A special case is the (well-known) invariance of the uniform Bernoulli measure under surjective cellular automata, which corresponds to the conservation of the trivial Hamiltonian. As an application, we obtain results indicating the lack of (non-trivial) Gibbs or Markov invariant measures for "sufficiently chaotic" cellular automata. We discuss the relevance of the randomization property of algebraic cellular automata to the problem of approach to macroscopic equilibrium, and pose several open questions. As an aside, a shift-invariant pre-image of a Gibbs measure under a pre-injective factor map between shifts of finite type turns out to be always a Gibbs measure. We provide a sufficient condition under which the image of a Gibbs measure under a pre-injective factor map is not a Gibbs measure. We point out a potential application of pre-injective factor maps as a tool in the study of phase transitions in statistical mechanical models.Comment: 50 pages, 7 figure