Implicit elitism in genetic search

Abstract

We introduce a notion of implicit elitism derived from the mutation operator in genetic algorithms. Probability of mutation less than 1/l (l being the chromosome size) along with probability of crossover less than one induces implicit elitism in genetic search. It implicitly transfers a few chromosomes with above-average fitness unperturbed to the population at next generation, thus maintaining the progress of genetic search. Experiments conducted on one-max and 0/1 knapsack problems testify its efficacy. Implicit elitism in combination with traditional explicit elitism enhances the search capability of genetic algorithms. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.