Exact solutions to the traveling salesperson problem by a population-based evolutionary algorithm

Abstract

This articles introduces a (μ + 1)-EA, which is proven to be an exact TSP problem solver for a population of exponential size. We will show non-trivial upper bounds on the runtime until an optimum solution has been found. To the best of our knowledge this is the first time it has been shown that an NP-hard problem is solved exactly instead of approximated only by a black box algorithm. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009.