Spectral analysis of transition operators, automata groups and translation in BBS (Q514290)

The \textit{box-ball system} with capacity \(k\) is the following endomorphism of \(\{0,1\}^*\). Given a word \(w\in\{0,1\}^*\), a ``carrier'' scans it left-to-right. The carrier initially contains \(0\) balls, and it may contain at most \(k\) balls. If \(w_i=0\) and the carrier contains a ball, then \(w_i\) becomes \(1\) and the carrier contains one ball fewer. If \(w_i=1\) and the carrier contains less than \(k\) balls, then \(w_i\) becomes \(0\) and the carrier contains one more ball. The carrier then moves to the next position. Letting \(a_i\), for \(i=0,\dots,k\), denote the action of the carrier on \(\{0,1\}^*\) if it initially contains \(i\) balls, we have the recursions \(a_0(s w)=0 a_s(w)\) and \(a_i(0 w)=1 a_{i-1}(w)\) and \(a_i(1 w)=0 a_{i+1}(w)\) for \(i=1,\dots,k-1\) and \(a_k(s w)=1 a_{k+1-s}(w)\). The authors note that, for \(k=1\), the operator \(a_0+a_1+a_0^*+a_1^*\) is conjugate to the random walk operator on the ``lamplighter group''; the computation of its spectrum in [\textit{R. I. Grigorchuk} and the last author, Geom. Dedicata 87, No. 1--3, 209--244 (2001; Zbl 0990.60049)] therefore applies to the box-ball system with capacity \(1\).