Stationary patterns in bistable reaction-diffusion cellular automata

Abstract

In this paper, we study stationary patterns of bistable reaction-diffusion cellular automata, i.e., models with discrete time, space and state. We show the rich variability based on the interplay of the capacity and viability and the specific form of reaction functions. While stationary k-periodic patterns occur naturally in many situations in large (exponential) numbers, there exist extreme situations for which there are no heterogeneous patterns. Moreover, nonmonotone dependence of the number of stationary patterns on the diffusion parameter is shown to be natural in the fully discrete setting.

Keywords

• patterns
• reaction-diffusion
• cellular automata
• discrete dynamics
• difference equations