Analysis of the asymptotic density of endogamous diploid cellular automata

Abstract

We investigate the asymptotic behaviour of diploid Elementary Cellular Automata (ECA), that is, the stochastic mixtures between two ECAs. In this model, each cell independently applies one rule with probability $λ$ and the other rule with probability $ 1 - λ$. Focusing on the endogamous diploids where the two ECAs are related by the reflection or conjugation symmetry, we analyse how the density varies as function of $λ$, the ``degree of mixing'' of these two rules. We propose a classification into six distinct classes depending on the profile of the density vs. $λ$ curve. We take various examples for each class and we analyse to which extent the local structure approximation succeeds to predict the asymptotic density. Our results show that for rules in which the asymptotic density depends linearly on $λ$, the local structure approximation reproduces the exact dependence of the density on $λ$. For rules with differentiable but nonlinear dependence, the approximation either becomes exact at a finite order or converges rapidly to the exact solution as the order increases. For rules with first-order phase transitions, finite-order approximations progressively approach a sharp transition profile with increasing order. In contrast, for rules exhibiting a second-order phase transition, even high-order approximations fail to capture the qualitative features of the transition. (no bifurcation is observed). Finally, we give examples of two diploid rules for which we succeed to compute the density at each time step.