Limiting shapes for a non-abelian sandpile growth model and related cellular automata

TL;DR

This paper investigates a non-abelian sandpile growth model, establishing new limiting shape results, including an octagon, using cellular automata techniques due to the model's non-abelian nature.

Contribution

It introduces a novel non-abelian sandpile model and develops new proof methods with cellular automata to analyze its limiting shapes, unlike previous abelian models.

Findings

Identified limiting shapes, including an octagon.

Developed cellular automata-based proof techniques.

Extended understanding of non-abelian sandpile dynamics.

Abstract

We present limiting shape results for a non-abelian variant of the abelian sandpile growth model (ASGM), some of which have no parallel in the ASGM. One of our limiting shapes is an octagon. In our model, mass spreads from the origin by the toppling rule in Zhang's sandpile model. Previously, several limiting shape results have been obtained for the ASGM using abelianness and monotonicity as main tools. As both properties fail for our model, we use a new proof technique: in our main proof, we introduce several cellular automata to mimic our growth model.