Emergent Properties in Structurally Dynamic Disordered Cellular Networks
Thomas Nowotny and Manfred Requardt
We relate structurally dynamic cellular networks, a class of models we developed in fundamental space-time physics, to SDCA, introduced some time ago by Ilachinski and Halpern. We emphasize the crucial property of a non-linear interaction of network geometry with the matter degrees of freedom in order to emulate the supposedly highly erratic and strongly fluctuating space-time structure on the Planck scale. We then embark on a detailed numerical analysis of various large scale characteristics of several classes of models in order to understand what will happen if some sort of macroscopic or continuum limit is performed. Of particular relevance in this context is a notion of network dimension and its behavior in this limit. Furthermore, the possibility of phase transitions is discussed.