Universality for two-dimensional critical cellular automata

We study two-dimensional critical bootstrap percolation models. We establish that a class of these models including all isotropic threshold rules with a convex symmetric neighbourhood, undergoes a sharp metastability transition. This extends previous instances proved for several specific rules. The paper supersedes a draft by Alexander Holroyd and the first author from 2012. While it served a role in the subsequent development of bootstrap percolation universality, we have ch...

We introduce a class of cellular automata growth models on the two-dimensional integer lattice with finite cross neighborhoods. These dynamics are determined by a Young diagram $\mathcal Z$ and the radius $\rho$ of the neighborhood, which we assume to be sufficiently large. A point becomes occupied if the pair of counts of currently occupied points on the horizontal and vertical parts of the neighborhood lies outside $\mathcal Z$. Starting with a small density $p$ of occupied...

In this note we provide an alternative proof of the fact that subcritical bootstrap percolation models have a positive critical probability in any dimension. The proof relies on a recent extension of the classical framework of Toom. This approach is not only simpler than the original multi-scale renormalisation proof of the result in two and more dimensions, but also gives significantly better bounds. As a byproduct, we improve the best known bounds for the stability threshol...

Dynamic properties of a one-dimensional probabilistic cellular automaton are studied by monte-carlo simulation near a critical point which marks a second-order phase transition from a active state to a effectively unique absorbing state. Values obtained for the dynamic critical exponents indicate that the transition belongs to the universality class of directed percolation. Finally the model is compared with a previously studied one to show that a difference in the nature of ...

We consider a dynamical process on a graph $G$, in which vertices are infected (randomly) at a rate which depends on the number of their neighbours that are already infected. This model includes bootstrap percolation and first-passage percolation as its extreme points. We give a precise description of the evolution of this process on the graph $\mathbb{Z}^2$, significantly sharpening results of Dehghanpour and Schonmann. In particular, we determine the typical infection time ...

In r-neighbour bootstrap percolation on a graph G, a set of initially infected vertices A \subset V(G) is chosen independently at random, with density p, and new vertices are subsequently infected if they have at least r infected neighbours. The set A is said to percolate if eventually all vertices are infected. Our aim is to understand this process on the grid, [n]^d, for arbitrary functions n = n(t), d = d(t) and r = r(t), as t -> infinity. The main question is to determine...

Based on extensive simulations, we conjecture that critically pinned interfaces in 2-dimensional isotropic random media with short range correlations are always in the universality class of ordinary percolation. Thus, in contrast to interfaces in $>2$ dimensions, there is no distinction between fractal (i.e., percolative) and rough but non-fractal interfaces. Our claim includes interfaces in zero-temperature random field Ising models (both with and without spontaneous nucleat...

Kinetically constrained models (KCM) are reversible interacting particle systems on $\mathbb Z^d$ with continuous time Markov dynamics of Glauber type, which represent a natural stochastic (and non-monotone) counterpart of the family of cellular automata known as $\mathcal U$-bootstrap percolation. KCM also display some of the peculiar features of the so-called "glassy dynamics", and as such they are extensively used in the physics literature to model the liquid-glass transit...

Consider a $p$-random subset $A$ of initially infected vertices in the discrete cube $[L]^d$, and assume that the neighbourhood of each vertex consists of the $a_i$ nearest neighbours in the $\pm e_i$-directions for each $i \in \{1,2,\dots, d\}$, where $a_1\le a_2\le \dots \le a_d$. Suppose we infect any healthy vertex $v\in [L]^d$ already having $r$ infected neighbours, and that infected sites remain infected forever. In this paper we determine the $(d-1)$-times iterated log...

We consider a class of percolation models where the local occupation variables have long-range correlations decaying as a power law $\sim r^{-a}$ at large distances $r$, for some $0< a< d$ where $d$ is the underlying spatial dimension. For several of these models, we present both, rigorous analytical results and matching simulations that determine the critical exponents characterizing the fixed point associated to their phase transition, which is of second order. The exact va...