Acceptance-probability-controlled simulated annealing: A method for modeling the optical constants of solids

A simulated annealing procedure with acceptance-probability control instead of the usual temperature control is proposed. The algorithm presented here has proved to be fully insensitive to initial parameter values, free of local-minima trapping problems, and shows superior convergence compared to adaptive-step classical simulated annealing with exponential cooling schedule. Experiments on computer generated synthetic data (with noise), closely resembling the optical constants of a metal, were performed to verify the effectiveness of the algorithm. The algorithm is then applied to parameter estimation of the model of optical constants of aluminum. (c) 1995 The American Physical Society