Structural Commutation Relations for Stochastic Labelled Graph Grammar Rule Operators

TL;DR

This paper develops a mathematical framework for calculating the algebra of operators in stochastic labelled-graph grammars, enabling better analysis and simulation of graph-based dynamical systems.

Contribution

It introduces a generic method to compute the product and commutator of graph grammar rule operators using elementary creation/annihilation operators, advancing the algebraic understanding of graph transformations.

Findings

The algebra of rule operators is closed with integer coefficients.

The product of off-diagonal rule parts yields non-negative integer coefficients.

Results hold for rules with or without hanging edges.

Abstract

We show how to calculate the operator algebra and the operator Lie algebra of a stochastic labelled-graph grammar. More specifically, we carry out a generic calculation of the product (and therefore the commutator) of time-evolution operators for any two labelled-graph grammar rewrite rules, where the operator corresponding to each rule is defined in terms of elementary two-state creation/annihilation operators. The resulting graph grammar algebra has the following properties: (1) The product and commutator of two such operators is a sum of such operators with integer coefficients. Thus, the algebra and the Lie algebra occurs entirely at the structural (or graph-combinatorial) level of graph grammar rules, lifted from the level of elementary creation/annihilation operators (an improvement over [1], Propositions 1 and 2). (2) The product of the off-diagonal (state-changing) parts of two such graph rule operators is a sum of off-diagonal graph rule operators with non-negative integer coefficients. (3) These results apply whether the semantics of a graph grammar rule leaves behind hanging edges (Theorem 1), or removes hanging edges (Theorem 2). (4) The algebra is constructive in terms of elementary two-state creation/annihilation operators (Corollaries 3 and 8). These results are useful because dynamical transformations of labelled graphs comprise a general modeling framework, and algebraic commutators of time-evolution operators have many analytic uses including designing simulation algorithms and estimating their errors.