Exponential Upper Bounds for the Runtime of Randomized Search Heuristics

We argue that proven exponential upper bounds on runtimes, an established area in classic algorithms, are interesting also in evolutionary computation and we prove several such results. We show that any of the algorithms randomized local search, Metropolis algorithm, simulated annealing, and (1+1) evolutionary algorithm can optimize any pseudo-Boolean weakly monotonic function under a large set of noise assumptions in a runtime that is at most exponential in the problem dimension~$n$. This drastically extends a previous such result, limited to the (1+1) EA, the LeadingOnes function, and one-bit or bit-wise prior noise with noise probability at most $1/2$, and at the same time simplifies its proof. With the same general argument, among others, we also derive a sub-exponential upper bound for the runtime of the $(1,\lambda)$ evolutionary algorithm on the OneMax problem when the offspring population size $\lambda$ is logarithmic, but below the efficiency threshold.