Cellular Automata Modeling of Physical Systems

Dynamical aspects of cellular automata (37B15) Research exposition (monographs, survey articles) pertaining to statistical mechanics (82-02) Dynamic lattice systems (kinetic Ising, etc.) and systems on graphs in time-dependent statistical mechanics (82C20) Neural nets applied to problems in time-dependent statistical mechanics (82C32) Kinetic theory of gases in time-dependent statistical mechanics (82C40)

Review text

The history of cellular automata goes back to John von Neumann in the late 1940's and is closely linked to that of digital computers. However, the aspect of cellular automata emphasized in this book was boosted strongly by the work of Stephen Wolfram in the early 1980's. Wolfram realized that cellular automata are discrete dynamical systems capable of showing phenomenon as complex as any ``real dynamical system, but that they offered the enormous advantage of being much more easily accessible to numerical analysis since their treatment involves only discrete computations that can be performed perfectly with a digital computer. Soon afterwards this point of view was pushed further by Tofolli and others that special cellular automata could be designed to specifically model particular physical systems, and in particular hydrodynamic equations. The current book provides a comprehensive account of these developments. Strictly speaking, the book does not limit itself to cellular automata modelling, but also discusses other methods such as lattice Boltzmann models, that in some cases offer a more efficient and flexible way of modelling the physical reality. In the words of the authors, ``the cellular automata approach is not a rigid framework. It is rather a philosophy of modelling which should be considered with some pragmatism. The important issue in cellular automata modelling is to capture the essential features of given phenomena and translate them in a suitable form to obtain an effective numerical model. The book begins with an Introduction, including a brief history and basic definition. Section 2 explains the basics of \textit{modelling } with cellular automata and provides the first examples of particular rules. Section 3 introduces the basics of the statistical mechanics of lattice gas models. In particular it is explained how the equations of hydrodynamics arise when one considers the macroscopic limits of suitably constructed cellular automata. In particular the famous FHP (Frisch-Hasslacher-Pomeau) model, introduced to model the Navier-Stokes equation, is introduced and discussed, as are lattice Boltzmann models. The remaining sections are devoted to particular physical phenomena. Section 4 concentrates on diffusions. The diffusion model is introduced and applied to interesting situations such as diffusion limited aggregation and surface absorption. Section 5 treats the even more complex reaction-diffusion processes, Section 6 several instances of nonequilibrium phase transitions, and the final Section 7 covers a wide range of further applications such as wave propagation, wetting phenomena, multi-particle fluids, and snow transport. The books shows the wide range of physical phenomena that can be modeled with these seemingly simple models, and the remarkable power they have to reproduce intricate and complex phenomena with remarkable accuracy. The material is very well presented. The book should become a standard reference for anyone interested in cellular automata modelling.

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