English

Computing Aggregate Properties of Preimages for 2D Cellular Automata

Cellular Automata and Lattice Gases 2017-12-01 v1

Abstract

Computing properties of the set of precursors of a given configuration is a common problem underlying many important questions about cellular automata. Unfortunately, such computations quickly become intractable in dimension greater than one. This paper presents an algorithm --- incremental aggregation --- that can compute aggregate properties of the set of precursors exponentially faster than na{\"i}ve approaches. The incremental aggregation algorithm is demonstrated on two problems from the two-dimensional binary Game of Life cellular automaton: precursor count distributions and higher-order mean field theory coefficients. In both cases, incremental aggregation allows us to obtain new results that were previously beyond reach.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1711.04563,
  title  = {Computing Aggregate Properties of Preimages for 2D Cellular Automata},
  author = {Randall D. Beer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1711.04563},
  year   = {2017}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T22:44:07.324Z