Preprint 2014-10
Julien Cassaigne, Nicolas Ollinger, Rodrigo Torres:
A small minimal aperiodic reversible Turing machine
Abstract:
A simple reversible Turing machine with four states, three symbols and no halting configuration is constructed that has no periodic orbit, simplifying a construction by Blondel, Cassaigne and Nichitiu and positively answering a conjecture by Kari and Ollinger. The constructed machine has other interesting properties: it is symmetric both for space and time and has a topologically minimal associated dynamical system whose column shift is associated to a substitution. Using a particular embedding technique of an arbitrary reversible Turing machine into the one presented, it is proven that the problem of determining if a given reversible Turing machine without halting state has a periodic orbit is undecidable.
