DMTCS Proceedings, Automata 2011 - 17th International Workshop on Cellular Automata and Discrete Complex Systems

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Bifurcations in Boolean Networks

Chris J. Kuhlman, Henning S. Mortveit, David Murrugarra, V. S. Anil Kumar

Abstract


This paper characterizes the attractor structure of synchronous and asynchronous Boolean networks induced by bi-threshold functions. Bi-threshold functions are generalizations of standard threshold functions and have separate threshold values for the transitions 0→1 (up-threshold) and 1→0 (down-threshold). We show that synchronous bi-threshold systems may, just like standard threshold systems, only have fixed points and 2-cycles as attractors. Asynchronous bi-threshold systems (fixed permutation update sequence), on the other hand, undergo a bifurcation. When the difference Δ of the down- and up-threshold is less than 2 they only have fixed points as limit sets. However, for Δ≥ 2 they may have long periodic orbits. The limiting case of Δ = 2 is identified using a potential function argument. Finally, we present a series of results on the dynamics of bi-threshold systems for families of graphs.

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