Coarsening and Bifurcations in Wide-Range Two-Dimensional Totalistic Cellular Automata

Abstract

We investigate Boolean, totalistic cellular automata with a majority or frustrated majority vote rule, and an interaction range of variable span. These two models show a behavior which differs from the mean-field one. The majority vote model is characterized by the presence of absorbing states, and there is a related bifurcation according to the initial density, in agreement with the mean-field approximation. For initial density equal to $0.5$, however, the dynamics is dominated by a coarsening process, which stops when clusters with a definite curvature radius are established. For the frustrated majority vote model, the mean-field approximation gives chaotic oscillations or a limit cycle. Instead, we observe active patterns, with stable density. Above a certain critical value for the interacting radius there is a bifurcation of the asymptotic density as a function of the initial one.