Stochastic Cellular Automata: Correlations, Decidability and Simulations

This paper introduces a simple formalism for dealing with deterministic, non- deterministic and stochastic cellular automata in an unified and composable manner. This formalism allows for local probabilistic correlations, a feature which is not present in usual definitions. We show that this feature allows for strictly more behaviors (for instance, number conserving stochastic cellular automata require these local probabilistic correlations). We also show that several problems which are deceptively simple in the usual definitions, become undecidable when we allow for local probabilistic correlations, even in dimension one. Armed with this formalism, we extend the notion of intrinsic simulation between deterministic cellular automata, to the non-deterministic and stochas- tic settings. Although the intrinsic simulation relation is shown to become undecidable in dimension two and higher, we provide explicit tools to prove or disprove the existence of such a simulation between any two given stochastic cellular automata. Those tools rely upon a characterization of equality of stochastic global maps, shown to be equivalent to the existence of a stochastic coupling between the random sources. We apply them to prove that there is no universal stochastic cellular automaton. Yet we provide stochastic cellular automata achieving optimal partial universality, as well as a universal non-deterministic cellular automaton.

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Field Value
Source https://hal.science/hal-00818306
Author Arrighi, Pablo, Schabanel, Nicolas, Theyssier, Guillaume
Maintainer CCSD
Last Updated May 11, 2026, 02:40 (UTC)
Created May 11, 2026, 02:40 (UTC)
Identifier hal-00818306
Language en
Rights https://about.hal.science/hal-authorisation-v1/
contributor Laboratoire d'Informatique de Grenoble (LIG) ; Université Pierre Mendès France - Grenoble 2 (UPMF)-Université Joseph Fourier - Grenoble 1 (UJF)-Institut polytechnique de Grenoble - Grenoble Institute of Technology (Grenoble INP)-Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble (INPG)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
creator Arrighi, Pablo
date 2013-04-22T00:00:00
harvest_object_id c82dab6a-1f5d-474c-b40d-080d6bd315ab
harvest_source_id 3374d638-d20b-4672-ba96-a23232d55657
harvest_source_title test moissonnage SELUNE
metadata_modified 2025-09-27T00:00:00
relation info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/arxiv/1304.7185
set_spec type:UNDEFINED