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arXiv · 2609.20337

Optimal Simulated Annealing for Partition Function Estimation

Heng Guo·Hongyang Liu·Xiongxin Yang·Yitong Yin·Yiyao Zhang
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Abstract

In this note, we give a simple analysis of a non-adaptive simulated annealing algorithm for estimating the partition function of Gibbs distributions. This yields the most efficient reduction of this kind so far. We also establish lower bounds for both general and non-adaptive algorithms, showing that our algorithm is optimal over a broad range of parameters.

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Heng Guo, Hongyang Liu, Xiongxin Yang, Yitong Yin, Yiyao Zhang. 2026-09-17. Optimal Simulated Annealing for Partition Function Estimation. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.20337

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