Conditional traffic-like rules for particle-flow simulation in cellular automata

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new framework for designing and analyzing two-dimensional binary cellular automata that conserve active cells, enabling better modeling of physical processes with conservation laws.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel approach to describe and understand particle-like cellular automata with conservation properties, facilitating their design and analysis.

Findings

Framework enables systematic design of conservation-preserving cellular automata

Provides tools for studying properties and dynamics of such automata

Lays groundwork for discovering new automata with physical process analogs

Abstract

This paper presents a novel approach to the description and understanding of two-dimensional binary cellular automata with the Moore neighborhood that preserve the number of active cells. Such dynamical systems are known to successfully capture particle dynamics and are often used as theoretical models of physical processes where some conservation laws have to be taken into account. Unfortunately, to date, there are no tools for designing such non-trivial cellular automata or for studying their properties, not to mention finding them all and describing their dynamics (even the order of magnitude of their number is unknown). We believe that the novel framework unfolded in this paper will make it possible to overcome all these challenges.