Local search (optimization)

In computer science, local search is a heuristic method for solving computationally hard optimization problems. Local search can be used on problems that can be formulated as finding a solution maximizing a criterion among a number of candidate solutions. Local search algorithms move from solution to solution in the space of candidate solutions (the search space) by applying local changes, until a solution deemed optimal is found or a time bound is elapsed.

Local search algorithms are widely applied to numerous hard computational problems, including problems from computer science (particularly artificial intelligence), mathematics, operations research, engineering, and bioinformatics. Examples of local search algorithms are WalkSAT and the 2-opt algorithm for the Traveling Salesman Problem.

Some problems where local search has been applied are:

Most problems can be formulated in terms of search space and target in several different manners. For example, for the travelling salesman problem a solution can be a cycle and the criterion to maximize is a combination of the number of nodes and the length of the cycle. But a solution can also be a path, and being a cycle is part of the target.

A local search algorithm starts from a candidate solution and then iteratively moves to a neighbor solution. This is only possible if a neighborhood relation is defined on the search space. As an example, the neighborhood of a vertex cover is another vertex cover only differing by one node. For boolean satisfiability, the neighbors of a truth assignment are usually the truth assignments only differing from it by the evaluation of a variable. The same problem may have multiple different neighborhoods defined on it; local optimization with neighborhoods that involve changing up to k components of the solution is often referred to as k-opt.

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