We study the class of asynchronous non-uniform cellular automata (ANUCA) over an arbitrary group universe with multiple local transition rules. We introduce the notion of stable injectivity, stable reversibility, stable post-surjectivity and investigate several dynamical properties of such automata. In particular, we establish the equivalence between reversibility, stable reversibility, and stable injectivity for ANUCA. We also prove the invertibility of several classes of injective and stably injective ANUCA. Counter-examples are given to highlight the differences between cellular automata and ANUCA.
This investigation studies the ergodic properties of reversible linear cellular automata over $\mathbb{Z}_m$ for $m \in \mathbb{N}$. We show that a reversible linear cellular automaton is either a Bernoulli automorphism or non-ergodic. This gives an affirmative answer to an open problem proposed in [Pivato, Ergodc theory of cellular automata, Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science, 2009, pp.~2980-3015] for the case of reversible linear cellular automata.
Delvenne, Kůrka and Blondel have defined new notions of computational complexity for arbitrary symbolic systems, and shown examples of effective systems that are computationally universal in this sense. The notion is defined in terms of the trace function of the system, and aims to capture its dynamics. We present a Devaney-chaotic reversible cellular automaton that is universal in their sense, answering a question that they explicitly left open. We also discuss some implications and limitations of the construction.
The dynamics group of an asynchronous cellular automaton (ACA) relates properties of its long term dynamics to the structure of Coxeter groups. The key mathematical feature connecting these diverse fields is involutions. Group-theoretic results in the latter domain may lead to insight about the dynamics in the former, and vice-versa. In this article, we highlight some central themes and common structures, and discuss novel approaches to some open and open-ended problems. We introduce the state automaton of an ACA, and show how the root automaton of a Coxeter group is essentially part of the st…
We consider the problem of computing the Lyapunov exponents of reversible cellular automata (CA). We show that the class of reversible CA with right Lyapunov exponent $2$ cannot be separated algorithmically from the class of reversible CA whose right Lyapunov exponents are at most $2-δ$ for some absolute constant $δ>0$. Therefore there is no algorithm that, given as an input a description of an arbitrary reversible CA $F$ and a positive rational number $ε>0$, outputs the Lyapunov exponents of $F$ with accuracy $ε$. We also compute the average Lyapunov exponents (with respect to the uniform mea…
We show that conjugacy of reversible cellular automata is undecidable, whether the conjugacy is to be performed by another reversible cellular automaton or by a general homeomorphism. This gives rise to a new family of finitely-generated groups with undecidable conjugacy problems, whose descriptions arguably do not involve any type of computation. For many automorphism groups of subshifts, as well as the group of asynchronous transducers and the homeomorphism group of the Cantor set, our result implies the existence of two elements such that every finitely-generated subgroup containing both ha…
This paper presents a new framework for asynchrony. This has its origins in our attempts to better harness the internal decision making process of cellular automata (CA). Thus, we show that a max-plus algebraic model of asynchrony arises naturally from the CA requirement that a cell receives the state of each neighbour before updating. The significant result is the existence of a bijective mapping between the asynchronous system and the synchronous system classically used to update cellular automata. Consequently, although the CA outputs look qualitatively different, when surveyed on "contours…
We study an abstract group of reversible Turing machines. In our model, each machine is interpreted as a homeomorphism over a space which represents a tape filled with symbols and a head carrying a state. These homeomorphisms can only modify the tape at a bounded distance around the head, change the state and move the head in a bounded way. We study three natural subgroups arising in this model: the group of finite-state automata, which generalizes the topological full groups studied in topological dynamics and the theory of orbit-equivalence; the group of oblivious Turing machines whose movem…
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 gro…
A sequential dynamical system, or SDS, consists of an undirected graph Y, a vertex-indexed list of local functions F_Y, and a permutation pi of the vertex set (or more generally, a word w over the vertex set) that describes the order in which these local functions are to be applied. In this article we investigate the special case where Y is a circular graph with n vertices and all of the local functions are identical. The 256 possible local functions are known as Wolfram rules and the resulting sequential dynamical systems are called finite asynchronous elementary cellular automata, or ACAs, s…
We study the problem of sequentializing a cellular automaton without introducing any intermediate states, and only performing reversible permutations on the tape. We give a decidable characterization of cellular automata which can be written as a single left-to-right sweep of a bijective rule from left to right over an infinite tape.
We show that the automorphism group of a one-dimensional full shift (the group of reversible cellular automata) does not satisfy the Tits alternative. That is, we construct a finitely-generated subgroup which is not virtually solvable yet does not contain a free group on two generators. We give constructions both in the two-sided case (spatially acting group $\Z$) and the one-sided case (spatially acting monoid $\N$, alphabet size at least eight). Lack of Tits alternative follows for several groups of symbolic (dynamical) origin: automorphism groups of two-sided one-dimensional uncountable sof…
We introduce the property of pre-expansivity for cellular automata (CA): it is the property of being expansive on asymptotic pairs of configurations (i.e. configurations that differ in only finitely many positions). Pre-expansivity therefore lies between expansivity and pre-injectivity, two important notions of CA theory. We show that there exist one-dimensional positively pre-expansive CAs which are not positively expansive and they can be chosen reversible (while positive expansivity is impossible for reversible CAs). We show however that no bi-dimensional CA which is linear over an Abelian …
We investigate some general properties of algebraic cellular automata, i.e., cellular automata over groups whose alphabets are affine algebraic sets and which are locally defined by regular maps. When the ground field is assumed to be uncountable and algebraically closed, we prove that such cellular automata always have a closed image with respect to the prodiscrete topology on the space of configurations and that they are reversible as soon as they are bijective.
For any infinite transitive sofic shift $X$ we construct a reversible cellular automaton (i.e. an automorphism of the shift $X$) which breaks any given finite point of the subshift into a finite collection of gliders traveling into opposing directions. This shows in addition that every infinite transitive sofic shift has a reversible CA which is sensitive with respect to all directions. As another application we prove a finitary Ryan's theorem: the automorphism group aut$(X)$ contains a two-element subset whose centralizer consists only of shift maps. We also show that in the class of $S$-gap …
When $G$ is an arbitrary group and $V$ is a finite-dimensional vector space, it is known that every bijective linear cellular automaton $τ\colon V^G \to V^G$ is reversible and that the image of every linear cellular automaton $τ\colon V^G \to V^G$ is closed in $V^G$ for the prodiscrete topology. In this paper, we present a new proof of these two results which is based on the Mittag-Leffler lemma for projective sequences of sets. We also show that if $G$ is a non-periodic group and $V$ is an infinite-dimensional vector space, then there exist a linear cellular automaton $τ_1 \colon V^G \to V^G$…
A sequential dynamical system (SDS) consists of a graph $G$ with vertices $v_1,v_2,\ldots,v_n$, a state set $A$, a collection of "vertex functions" $\{f_{v_i}\}_{i=1}^n$, and a permutation $π\in S_n$ that specifies how to compose these functions to yield the SDS map $[G,\{f_{v_i}\}_{i=1}^n,π]\colon A^n\to A^n$. In this paper, we study symmetric invertible SDS defined over the cycle graph $C_n$ using the set of states $\mathbb F_2$. These are, in other words, asynchronous elementary cellular automata (ECA) defined using ECA rules 150 and 105. Each of these SDS defines a group action on the set …
We consider the range of possible dynamics of cellular automata (CA) on two-sided beta-shifts $S_β$. We show that any reversible CA $F:S_β\to S_β$ has an almost equicontinuous direction whenever $S_β$ is not sofic. This has the corollary that non-sofic beta-shifts are topologically direct prime. We also make some preliminary observations on direct topological factorizations of beta-shifts that are subshifts of finite type.
While the reversibility of multidimensional cellular automata is undecidable and there exists a criterion for determining if a multidimensional linear cellular automaton is reversible, there are only a few results about the reversibility problem of multidimensional linear cellular automata under boundary conditions. This work proposes a criterion for testing the reversibility of a multidimensional linear cellular automaton under null boundary condition and an algorithm for the computation of its reverse, if it exists. The investigation of the dynamical behavior of a multidimensional linear cel…
Cellular automata are topological dynamical systems. We consider the problem of deciding whether two cellular automata are conjugate or not. We also consider deciding strong conjugacy, that is, conjugacy by a map that commutes with the shift maps. We show that the following two sets of pairs of one-dimensional one-sided cellular automata are recursively inseparable: (i) pairs where the first cellular automaton has strictly higher entropy than the second one, and (ii) pairs that are strongly conjugate and both have zero topological entropies. This implies that the following decision problems ar…
Let $G$ be a group and let $X$ be an algebraic variety over an algebraically closed field $k$ of characteristic zero. Denote $A=X(k)$ the set of rational points of $X$. We investigate invertible algebraic cellular automata $τ\colon A^G \to A^G$ whose local defining map is induced by some morphism of algebraic varieties $X^M \to X$ where $M$ is a finite memory. When $G$ is locally embeddable into finite groups (LEF), then we show that the inverses of reversible algebraic cellular automata are automatically algebraic cellular automata. Generalizations are also obtained for finite product Hopfian…
