This course is run at the The University of Nottingham within the School of Computer Science & IT. The course is run by Graham Kendall (EMAIL : gxk@cs.nott.ac.uk)
If you heat a solid past melting point and then cool it, the structural properties
of the solid depend on the rate of cooling. If the liquid is cooled slowly enough,
large crystals will be formed. However, if the liquid is cooled quickly (quenched)
the crystals will contain imperfections.
Metropolis's algorithm simulated the material as a system of particles. The algorithm simulates the cooling process by gradually lowering the temperature of the system until it converges to a steady, frozen state.
In 1982, Kirkpatrick et al (Kirkpatrick, 1983) took the idea of the Metropolis
algorithm and applied it to optimisation problems. The idea is to use simulated
annealing to search for feasible solutions and converge to an optimal solution.
Simulated annealing is described in many textbooks. If you want an easy to follow description, I would recommend (Dowsland, 1995). Not only is the description good, but it contains many references for the interested student. Much of this text is based on (Dowsland, 1995).
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Last Updated : 25/01/2002