Relations of simulated annealing and quantum annealing are studied by a mapping from the transition matrix of classical Markovian dynamics of the Ising model to a quantum Hamiltonian and vice versa. It is shown that these two operators, the transition matrix and the Hamiltonian, share the eigenvalue spectrum. Thus, if simulated annealing with slow temperature change does not encounter a difficu...

Metaheuristics are a class of effective algorithms for optimization problems. A basic implementation of a metaheuristic typically requires rather little development effort. With a significantly larger investment in the design, implementation, and fine-tuning, metaheuristics can often produce state-of-the-art results. According to the amount of development effort, we say that an implementation o...

NiCrAlY coating was prepared on a stainless steel substrate by an arc ion plating machine and the annealing experiments were carried out at different temperatures using a tube furnace. The effects of annealing temperatures on the morphology, structure, chemical composition and phase structure of the coating were characterized by SEM, EDS and XRD, respectively. The change of microstructure is di...

The path integral Monte Carlo simulated quantum annealing algorithm is applied to the optimization of a large hard instance of the random satisfiability problem (N = 10,000). The dynamical behavior of the quantum and the classical annealing are compared, showing important qualitative differences in the way of exploring the complex energy landscape of the combinatorial optimization problem. At v...

The chaotic simulated annealing algorithm for combinatorial optimization problems is examined in the light of the global bifurcation structure of the chaotic neural networks. We show that the result of the chaotic simulated annealing algorithm is primarily dependent upon the global bifurcation structure of the chaotic neural networks and unlike the stochastic simulated annealing infinitely slow...

Search-based software testing is the application of metaheuristic search techniques to generate software tests. The test adequacy criterion is transformed into a fitness function and a set of solutions in the search space are evaluated with respect to the fitness function using a metaheuristic search technique. The application of metaheuristic search techniques for testing is promising due to t...

An algorithm is developed to statistically find the best global fit of a nonlinear non-convex cost-function over a D-dimensional space. It is argued that this algorithm permits an annealing schedule for ''temperature'' T decreasing exponentially in annealing-time k, T = T 0 exp(−ck 1/D). The introduction of re-annealing also permits adaptation to changing sensitivities in the multi-dimensional ...

Many algorithms have been devised for tackling combinatorial optimisation problems (COPs). Traditional Operations Research (OR) techniques such as Branch and Bound and Cutting Planes Algorithms can, given enough time, guarantee an optimal solution as they explicitly exploit features of the optimisation function they are solving. Specialised heuristics exist for most COPs that also exploit featu...

A systematic evaluation of various fractal analysis methods is essential for studying morphologies of finite and noisy experimental patterns such as domains of long chain alkanes at SiO(2)/air interfaces. The derivation of trustworthy fractal dimensions crucially relies on the definition of confidence intervals for the assumed scaling range. We demonstrate that the determination of the interval...