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- Newsgroups: comp.theory.cell-automata
- Path: sparky!uunet!charon.amdahl.com!pacbell.com!sgiblab!swrinde!emory!gatech!bloom-beacon!INTERNET!dont-send-mail-to-path-lines
- From: hurd@math.gatech.EDU (Lyman Hurd)
- Subject: subshifts of finite type.
- Message-ID: <9211120153.AA28752@math.gatech.edu>
- Sender: root@athena.mit.edu (Wizard A. Root)
- Organization: The Internet
- References: <9211110719.AA13554@Early-Bird.Think.COM>
- Distribution: inet
- Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 01:53:14 GMT
- Lines: 31
-
- Funny, a friend, Mike Boyle, has been trying to convince me to generalize
- from cellular automata to SFT's! Basically the general consensus if that
- subshifts of finite type are horizontal and cellular automata vertical.
-
- What I mean by that is that is that a cellular automaton is a map commuting
- with the shift, whereas a subshift of finite type is defined as a shift
- map.
-
- A sofic system by definition is the image of a subshift of finite type
- under a cellular automaton map. All sofic systems arise this way, although
- not all arise as images of the full shift.
-
- Some SFT's do arise in CA dynamics. In many such cases the cellular
- automaton stabilizes:
-
- F^n(X) = F^m(X) as sets for all n,m>N.
-
- I was able to show (it is not hard) that if the limit set (the intersection
- of forward images) is a subshift of finite type, the rule must stabilize in
- this manner. I conjectured that the converse was true---that whenever a
- rule stabilized it must do so as a subshift of finite type. Boyle and I
- later showed this conjecture is false. The subject of stable limit sets
- appears to be deep.
-
- The motivation for studying subshifts of finite type belongs to the ergodic
- theorists and I have forwarded your inquiry in the hopes of getting that
- persepctive.
-
-
- Lyman Hurd
- Iterated Systems, Inc.
-