Coarse Graining of Partitioned Cellular Automata

Abstract

Partitioned cellular automata are known to be an useful tool to simulate linear and nonlinear problems in physics, specially because they allow for a straightforward way to define conserved quantities and reversible dynamics. Here we show how to construct a local coarse graining description of partitioned cellular automata. By making use of this tool we investigate the effective dynamics in this model of computation. All examples explored are in the scenario of lattice gases, so that the information lost after the coarse graining is related to the number of particles. It becomes apparent how difficult it is to remain with a deterministic dynamics after coarse graining. Several examples are shown where an effective stochastic dynamics is obtained after a deterministic dynamics is coarse grained. These results suggest why random processes are so common in nature.