English

Complexity of the Freezing Majority Rule with L-shaped Neighborhoods

Computational Complexity 2025-09-22 v1 Discrete Mathematics

Abstract

In this article we investigate the computational complexity of predicting two dimensional freezing majority cellular automata with states {1,+1}\{-1,+1\}, where the local interactions are based on an L-shaped neighborhood structure. In these automata, once a cell reaches state +1+1, it remains fixed in that state forever, while cells in state 1-1 update to the most represented state among their neighborhoods. We consider L-shaped neighborhoods, which mean that the vicinity of a given cell cc consists in a subset of cells in the north and east of cc. We focus on the prediction problem, a decision problem that involves determining the state of a given cell after a given number of time-steps. We prove that when restricted to the simplest L-shaped neighborhood, consisting of the central cell and its nearest north and east neighbors, the prediction problem belongs to NC\mathsf{NC}, meaning it can be solved efficiently in parallel. We generalize this result for any L-shaped neighborhood of size two. On the other hand, for other L-shaped neighborhoods, the problem becomes P\mathsf{P}-complete, indicating that the problem might be inherently sequential.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2509.16065,
  title  = {Complexity of the Freezing Majority Rule with L-shaped Neighborhoods},
  author = {Pablo Concha-Vega and Eric Goles and Pedro Montealegre and Kévin Perrot},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.16065},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

17 pages, 7 figures