Generalizations
A sofic system is a subshift of finite type where different edges of the transition graph may correspond to the same symbol. It may be regarded as the set of labellings of paths through an automaton: a subshift of finite type then corresponds to an automaton which is deterministic.
A renewal system is defined to be the set of all infinite concatenations of a finite set of finite words.
Subshifts of finite type are identical to free (non-interacting) one-dimensional Potts models (n-letter generalizations of Ising models), with certain nearest-neighbor configurations excluded. Interacting Ising models are defined as subshifts together with a continuous function of the configuration space (continuous with respect to the product topology, defined below); the partition function and Hamiltonian are explicitly expressible in terms of this function.
Subshifts may be quantized in a certain way, leading to the idea of the quantum finite automata.
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