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Simulated Annealing Beats Metropolis in Combinatorial Optimization

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Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP 2005)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 3580))

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Abstract

The Metropolis algorithm is simulated annealing with a fixed temperature. Surprisingly enough, many problems cannot be solved more efficiently by simulated annealing than by the Metropolis algorithm with the best temperature. The problem of finding a natural example (artificial examples are known) where simulated annealing outperforms the Metropolis algorithm for all temperatures has been discussed by Jerrum and Sinclair (1996) as “an outstanding open problem.” This problem is solved here. The examples are instances of the well-known minimum spanning tree problem. Moreover, it is investigated which instances of the minimum spanning tree problem can be solved efficiently by simulated annealing. This is motivated by the aim to develop further methods to analyze the simulated annealing process.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. FB Informatik, LS2, Univ. Dortmund, Germany

    Ingo Wegener

Authors
  1. Ingo Wegener
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. CITI / Departamento de Informática, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal

    Luís Caires

  2. Dipartimento di Informatica, Sistemi e Produzione, Università di Roma “Tor Vergata”, via del Politecnico 1, 00133, Roma, Italy

    Giuseppe F. Italiano

  3. Departamento de Informatica, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2829-516, Caparica, Portugal

    Luís Monteiro

  4. Ecole Polytechnique, Rue de Saclay, 91128, Palaiseau Cedex, France

    Catuscia Palamidessi

  5. Computer Science Department, Google Inc. and Columbia University, 1214 Amsterdam Avenue, NY 10027, New York, USA

    Moti Yung

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© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Wegener, I. (2005). Simulated Annealing Beats Metropolis in Combinatorial Optimization. In: Caires, L., Italiano, G.F., Monteiro, L., Palamidessi, C., Yung, M. (eds) Automata, Languages and Programming. ICALP 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3580. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11523468_48

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11523468_48

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-27580-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-31691-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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