Simulating physics with cellular automata
Abstract
Cellular automata are dynamical systems where space, time, and variables are discrete. They are shown on two-dimensional examples to be capable of non-numerical simulations of physics. They are useful for faithful parallel processing of lattice models. At another level, they exhibit behaviours and illustrate concepts that are unmistakably physical, such as non-ergodicity and order parameters, frustration, relaxation to chaos through period doublings, a conspicuous arrow of time in reversible microscopic dynamics, causality and light-cone, and non-separability. In general, they constitute exactly computable models for complex phenomena and large-scale correlations that result from very simple short-range interactions. We study their space, time, and intrinsic symmetries and the corresponding conservation laws, with an emphasis on the conservation of information obeyed by reversible cellular automata.
- Publication:
-
Physica D Nonlinear Phenomena
- Pub Date:
- January 1984
- DOI:
- 10.1016/0167-2789(84)90253-7
- Bibcode:
- 1984PhyD...10...96V