Applicability of the Hunjan-Ramaswamy global optimization method.

Int. J. Mol. Sci. 3, 30 (2002)]; Phys. Rev. E 66, 046704 (2002)]] a method for global optimization, according to which the global minimum of a potential V(f) can be found, if a potential V(i) (with a known global minimum) is transformed adiabatically in time to V(f) , with the use of a switching function of time g (t) , which interpolates between 0 and 1, and lies in the [0,1] interval. In the present work, the method is examined in detail. With the use of a very simple one-dimensional hypothetical potential, it is shown that the potential transformation may not always be followed by a global minimum transformation, which indicates that the method may not always be safely applied in determining the global minimum. An attempt to improve the method is made by allowing the switching function g (t) to take values outside the [0,1] interval. This improved method is shown to succeed in three different realistic problems, for which the original method fails.