A Perturbed Cellular Automaton with Two Phase Transitions for the Ergodicity




Marsan, Hugo; Sablik, Mathieu; Törmä, Ilkka

PublisherSpringer Science+Business Media

2026

 Journal of Statistical Physics

6

193

1

0022-4715

1572-9613

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1007/s10955-025-03564-0

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10955-025-03564-0

https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/508988842



The positive rates conjecture states that a one-dimensional probabilistic cellular automaton (PCA) with strictly positive transition rates must be ergodic. The conjecture has been refuted by Gács, whose counterexample is a cellular automaton that is non-ergodic under uniform random noise with sufficiently small rate. For all known counterexamples, non-ergodicity has been proved under small enough rates. Conversely, all cellular automata are ergodic with sufficiently high-rate noise. No other types of phase transitions of ergodicity are known, and the behavior of known counterexamples under intermediate noise rates is unknown. We present an example of a cellular automaton with two phase transitions. Using Gács’s result as a black box, we construct a cellular automaton that is ergodic under small noise rates, non-ergodic for slightly higher rates, and again ergodic for rates close to 1.


Open Access funding provided by University of Turku (including Turku University Central Hospital). Ilkka Törmä was supported by the Academy of Finland grant 359921, and a visiting researcher grant from Paul Sabatier University. M. Sablik acknowledges the support of the ANR “Difference” project (ANR-20-CE40-0002).


Last updated on 12/02/2026 10:40:21 AM