A NONLINEAR DYNAMICS PERSPECTIVE OF WOLFRAM'S NEW KIND OF SCIENCE PART XI: PERIOD-2 RULES

Abstract

The 11th part of our tour through one-dimensional binary Cellular Automata concerns period-2 rules, which form the second group in our classification of the 88 globally-independent CA rules according to the properties of their periodic orbits. In this article, we display the basin tree diagrams of all period-2 rules along with their time-2 characteristic functions, and then we prove that all rules belonging to group 2 have robust period-2 ω-limit orbits for any finite, and infinite, bit string length. This rigorous result, which pairs with the one about period-1 rules given in the tenth installment of our chronicle, confirms what we stated about period-2 rules on the basis of empirical evidence. In the second part of this tutorial, we introduce the notion of quasi global-equivalence and prove that there are only 82 quasi globally-independent CA rules. For the first time, we show that the space-time patterns of globally-independent local rules can depend on each other, and we present an example of quasi-global transformation. We also define the super string 𝄞, and its unique decimal representation x𝄞, dubbed the super decimal, which provides a completely transparent yet rigorous proof that rule [Formula: see text] is chaotic when L → ∞. Moreover, we present the basin tree generation formulas, which uncover the analytical relationships between basin trees of globally-equivalent rules. Last but not least, for pedagogical and epistemological reasons, we conclude this paper with the selection of rule[Formula: see text], instead of rule [Formula: see text], as the prototypic universal Turing machine for our future discourse.