2022/11/15 by Luca Bertolani, Bertolani, Luca, A. Idini +1
Computer Science · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Cellular Automata and Applications #Cellular Automata and Lattice Gases (nlin.CG) #Computational Physics (physics.comp-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) #Stochastic processes and statistical mechanics
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2211.08166
openalex publication_date 2022/11/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Cellular automata are a set of computational models in discrete space that have a discrete time evolution defined by neighbourhood rules. They are used to simulate many complex systems in physics and science in general. In this work, statistical mechanics and thermodynamics are used to analyse a large set of outer totalistic two-dimensional cellular automata. Thermodynamic variables and potentials are derived and computed according to three different approaches to determine if a cellular automaton rule is representing a system akin to the ideal gas, in or out of the thermodynamical equilibrium. It is suggested that this classification is sufficiently robust and predictive of interesting properties for particular set of rules.