Effects of a Vanishing Noise on Elementary Cellular Automata Phase-Space Structure

Abstract

We investigate elementary cellular automata (ECA) from the point of view of (discrete) dynamical systems. By studying small lattice sizes, we obtain the complete phase space of all minimal ECA, and, starting from a maximal entropy distribution (all configurations equiprobable), we show how the dynamics affects this distribution. We then investigate how a vanishing noise alters this phase space, connecting attractors and modifying the asymptotic probability distribution. What is interesting is that this modification not always goes in the sense of decreasing the entropy.