A simple strategy for constructing ultradiscrete systems that exhibit the same dynamics as a given continuous model

Over the past 30 years, the special limiting procedure known as ultradiscretisation has become the tool of choice in the field of infinite dimensional integrable systems for constructing cellular automata that exhibit solitonic behaviour, as e.g. in the Korteweg-de Vries equation.

A lesser known fact is that, in many cases, ultradiscretisation can also be used to construct cellular automata that retain the essential dynamical features (such as the existence of limit cycles etc.) of a dynamical system expressed in terms of ordinary differential equations (ODEs).

In its standard application, the ultradiscretisation procedure relies on the prior construction of a `good' discretisation of the dynamical system at hand, that shares the essential dynamical features of the ODE and which is sign-free, making it amenable to the ultradiscrete limit.

In this paper we show, on a simple but generic model, that even if one starts from a discrete system with different dynamical features than the ODE one obtains as its continuum limit, the ultradiscrete limit can be tweaked such that the dynamics of the resulting cellular automaton is closer to that of the continuum limit than to that of the discrete model itself.