Cellular Automata/Glossary

lattice cellular automaton neighborhood A neighborhood of a cell is the set formed by all cells in the lattice that will drive the change of the state of when the transition rule acts upon them. See definition and examples. preimage preimage matrix boundary cyclic boundary configuration A configuration of a Cellular Automaton is a collection of all status of its components cells at instant . It can be understood as a snapshot of the automaton at a point of its history in a way that at any instant we have sequence pattern evolution Quiescent state A cell is in a quiescent state , if all cells in its neighborhood are the same quiescent state. Nilpotent rule (of order n) Any configuration evolves in at most steps into a configuration with all cells in any quiescent state . Idempotent configuration (of order n) A configuration that in at most steps evolves into a steady configuration (C^{t+1}=C^t). Idempotent rule A rule for which all configurations are idempotent. Superluminal configuration A configuration for which the phase speed is greater than the speed of light. The phase speed is the shift of the configuration per time. Glider Eather pattern A background for gliders, somethimes the most common background.