Definitions for "Simulated annealing"
(n.) An optimization technique introduced by Kirkpatrick in 1983 which uses statistical physics methods to find an approximate optimal solution to a problem. Typically a thermodynamic analogy is used for the model system under study and the task of finding an optimal solution is mapped to that of finding the ground state of the thermodynamic system.
A method for finding solutions to combinatorial optimization problems.
based on thermodynamics;
refers to: learning algorithm A specific type of a learning algorithm, especially for feedback type neural nets. see also: Hopfield Net