PHENOMENOLOGY OF RETAINED REFRACTORINESS: ON SEMI-MEMRISTIVE DISCRETE MEDIA

Abstract

We study two-dimensional cellular automata, each cell takes three states: resting, excited and refractory. A resting cell excites if the number of excited neighbors lies in a certain interval (excitation interval). An excited cell becomes refractory independently on states of its neighbors. A refractory cell returns to a resting state only if the number of excited neighbors belong to recovery interval. The model is an excitable cellular automaton abstraction of a spatially extended semi-memristive medium where a cell's resting state symbolizes low-resistance and refractory state high-resistance. The medium is semi-memristive because only transition from high- to low-resistance is controlled by the density of local excitation. We present a phenomenological classification of the automata behavior for all possible excitation intervals and recovery intervals. We describe eleven classes of cellular automata with retained refractoriness based on the criteria of space-filling ratio, morphological and generative diversity, and types of traveling localizations.