Procedure of thermodynamical origin used to minimize the energy function
Based on a metaphor with annealing, the process of heating and cooling a metal such that the molecules come to rest in a tightly coupled manner, used, for example, in making a sword strong. Simulated annealling in a computer program often follows a regimented schedule whereby a "temperature" parameter is slowly lowered, and randomness is slowly diminished. This helps systems settle in optimum areas, and helps to avoid local maxima.
is a stochastic optimisation technique inspired by the physical process of annealing.
Search technique where a single trial solution is modified at random. An energy is defined which represents how good the solution is. The goal is to find the best solution by minimising the energy. Changes which lead to a lower energy are always accepted; an increase is probabilistically accepted. The probability is given by exp(-Delta E/kT). Where Delta E is the change in energy, k is a constant and T is the Temperature. Initially the temperature is high corresponding to a liquid or molten state where large changes are possible and it is progressively reduced using a cooling schedule so allowing smaller changes until the system solidifies at a low energy solution.
A molecular dynamics method that simulates the heating and cooling of a system in order to describe the most stable state.
An optimization method used to solve many-dimensional problems in which there is no direct path to a solution. The method is slower than other optimization methods, but is capable of finding optimal solutions where other methods fail. CORVUSĀ® uses simulated annealing to choose optimal intensities for the finite size pencil beams that comprise an intensity modulated radiation treatment .
A partially RANDOM method of SEARCH and OPTIMIZATION usually used for COMBINATORIAL OPTIMIZATION problems. The technique is modeled on how the molecular structure of metals is disordered at high temperatures but very ordered and crystalline at low temperatures. In simulated annealing, a problem instance is reformulated so that it loosely resembles disordered material. Gradually, the temperature is lowered such that the ordered states correspond to good solutions to a problem.
Simulated annealing (SA) is a generic probabilistic meta-algorithm for the global optimization problem, namely locating a good approximation to the global optimum of a given function in a large search space. It was independently invented by S. Kirkpatrick, C.