Quantifying Self-Organization in Cyclic Cellular Automata

Cyclic cellular automata (CCA) are models of excitable media. Started from random initial conditions, they produce several different kinds of spatial structure, depending on their control parameters. We introduce new tools from information theory that let us calculate the dynamical information content of spatial random processes. This complexity measure allows us to quantitatively determine the rate of self-organization of these cellular automata, and establish the relationship between parameter values and self-organization in CCA. The method is very general and can easily be applied to other cellular automata or even digitized experimental data.