Abstract

this paper the concept of chaotic attractor is used only as an example of a dynamic behavior that could a#ect the search process, we summarize the main characteristics and refer to [13] for a detailed theoretical analysis. Chaotic attractors are characterized by a "contraction of the areas", so that trajectories starting with di#erent initial conditions will be compressed in a limited area of the configuration space, and by a "sensitive dependence upon the initial conditions", so that di#erent trajectories will diverge. For an analytical characterization of this sensitive dependence, it is convenient to introduce the concept of Lyapunov exponent. Let us consider the function g that maps the point at step n

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