De Bruijn Sequences Provide Compact Initial Conditions

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A de Bruijn sequence is the shortest sequence of numbers from a given alphabet that contains all possible subsequences of length . As such, it becomes the perfect initial condition for a cellular automaton (CA) where it is desirable to insure that all possible neighborhoods are explored.

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For the elementary cellular automata, the alphabet is {0,1} and =3. The de Bruijn sequence is {00011101}. Since the initial condition is typically specified as surrounded by a sea of zeros, the initial condition can be specified as just the five digits (11101). This is a far cry from the 24 bits that you would think are required to specify the eight possible three-digit neighborhoods: 000, 001, 011, 111, 110, 101, 010, 100.

So, what are the similar bit patterns for CA rules with more than two colors and/or more than range=1 neighborhoods? Use the slider at the top to prove to yourself that every pattern from 0 to appears somewhere in the cleverly constructed de Bruijn digit sequence.

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Contributed by: John Kiehl (March 2011)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA


Snapshots


Details

Snapshot 1: The 160 binary bits needed to represent all 32-digit sequences of a , rule space can be collapsed to just a 27-digit sequence.

Snapshot 2: The 1215 base-3 digits of a , rule space can be collapsed to just 238 digits.

Snapshot 3: The 5120 base-4 digits of a , rule space can be collapsed to just 1019 digits.

Snapshot 4: On the border of intelligibility, these 3129 digits were formatted trivially using Mathematica's new Pane graphics.

Use the slider to convince yourself that all the digit sequences from 0 to are represented in these patterns. Other digit sequences can be explored with Mathematica's DeBruijnSequence function from the Combinatorica add-on package. In general, the length of a de Bruijn sequence for a -digit alphabet with -length subsequences is simply . These sequences are not unique, but rather have permutations.



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