Complex automata: Multi-scale modeling with coupled cellular automata

Abstract

Cellular Automata (CA) are generally acknowledged to be a powerful way to describe and model natural phenomena [1-3]. There are even tempting claims that nature itself is one big (quantum) information processing system, e.g. [4], and that CA may actually be nature's way to do this processing [5-7]. We will not embark on this philosophical road, but ask ourselves a more mundane question. Can we use CA to model the inherently multi-scale processes in nature and use these models for efficient simulations on digital computers? © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.