Emergence of density dynamics by surface interpolation in elementary cellular automata

A classic problem in elementary cellular automata (ECAs) is the specification of numerical tools to represent and study their dynamical behaviour. Mean field theory and basins of attraction have been commonly used; however, although the first case gives the long term estimation of density, frequently it does not show an adequate approximation for the step-by-step temporal behaviour; mainly for non-trivial behaviour. In the second case, basins of attraction display a complete representation of the evolution of an ECA, but they are limited up to configurations of 32 cells; and for the same ECA, one can obtain tens of basins to analyse. This paper is devoted to represent the dynamics of density in ECAs for hundreds of cells using only two surfaces calculated by the nearest-neighbour interpolation. A diversity of surfaces emerges in this analysis. Consequently, we propose a surface and histogram based classification for periodic, chaotic and complex ECA.