Optimization by simulated catalytic reaction: Application to graph bisection

Chemical reactions have an intricate relationship with the search for better-quality neighborhood solutions to optimization problems. A catalytic reaction for chemical reactions provides a clue and a framework to solve complicated optimization problems. The application of a catalytic reaction reveals new information hidden in the optimization problem and provides a non-intuitive perspective. This paper proposes a new simulated catalytic reaction method for search in optimization problems. In the experiments using this method, significantly improved results are obtained in almost all graphs tested by applying to a graph bisection problem, which is a representative problem of combinatorial optimization problems.