In general, specifying an initial temperature for annealing is usually
a straightforward procedure. Infinite temperature means that the
changes are always accepted (i.e. the acceptance ratio is 1), which
produces random configurations. In practice the initial temperature
should not be too large, or else the cooling will take too long, and
the annealing will spend too much time at higher temperatures where
little useful work is being done. So the initial temperature is
usually chosen to be the lowest possible value that still gives a high
acceptance ratio (greater than #tex2html_wrap_inline1866#, for example).
Choosing an initial temperature is much more difficult when we use
a preprocessor to provide a good starting configuration
rather than the usual random initial configuration. In that case,
we must be very careful that the initial temperature and the
acceptance ratio are not so high that the good initial configuration
is randomized to the point where it loses its usefulness
leading to inferior final solution or a solution with high cost.
However the initial temperature must be high enough so that we can
still make effective changes in the configuration.
In this set of experimental starting temperatures we have observed
that when using the 3 intermediate temperatures, 495, 500 and 505, and
particularly 500 for both schedules, the system simulation comes as
close as satisfying those criteria, more so than when other
temperatures of the set are used.