On logical gates in precipitating medium: cellular automaton model

TL;DR

This paper explores a cellular automaton model simulating reversible precipitation in a chemical medium, demonstrating how logical gates can be realized through pattern competition and localized growth restrictions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel cellular automaton model that mimics precipitation processes and shows how logical operations can be implemented via pattern interactions.

Findings

Precipitating patterns exhibit non-trivial growth and nucleation.

Logical gates are realized through pattern competition.

Self-restricted propagation enables computational operations.

Abstract

We study a two-dimensional semi-totalistic binary cell-state cellular automaton, which imitates a reversible precipitation in an abstract chemical medium. The systems exhibits a non-trivial growth and nucleation. We demonstrate how basic computational operation can be realized in the system when the propagation of the growing patterns is self-restricted by stationary localizations. We show that precipitating patterns of different morphology compete between each other and thus implement serial and non-serial logical gates.