Cellular automata, quasigroups and symmetries (Q5953386)

The authors investigate Cellular Automata (CA) with a local rule \(\varphi: G^2\to G\), where the local rule defines a quasigroup or Latin square structure on the finite set \(G\). They look for the complete class of such rules that may produce symmetric \(\overline V_\varphi\)-configurations. The central issues are the existence and the nature of such rules, and the nature and number of symmetric patterns that may be obtained from them. In the first part of the paper, they find that semisymmetric or totally symmetric quasigroups define the CA-rules, which may produce symmetric \(\overline V_\varphi\)-configurations. In the second section, they study semisymmetric quasigroups in more detail. In the third section, they study the number of rotationally invariant \(\overline V_\varphi\)-configurations generated by a CA. In the last section they investigate the possible symmetries of a \(\overline V_\varphi\)-configuration closer. They classify \(\overline V_\varphi\)-configurations according to their stabilizer and construct a matrix, which enables the counting of the different number of configurations with a prescribed stabilizer.