*Edited by Marcos de Sales Guerra Tsuzuki*

Simulated Annealing is a probabilistic meta-heuristic that is based on statistical mechanics: while at high temperatures molecules in a liquid move freely, the slow reduction of temperature decreases the thermal mobility of the molecules. The final state forms a pure crystal which also corresponds to a state of minimum energy. We encourage readers to explore SA in their work, mainly because it is simple and because it can yield very good results.

ISBN 978-953-51-0710-1

Simulated Annealing - Advances, Applications and Hybridizations

Photo by Cynthia Shirk / iStock
