Theoretical comparisons of search dynamics of genetic algorithms and evolution strategies

Genetic algorithms (GAs) and evolution strategies (ESs) are two widely used evolutionary algorithms. The main differences between GAs and ESs lie in their representations and variation operators, which result in very different search dynamics. In this paper, we compare the search dynamics of GAs and ESs theoretically using a theoretical framework for analyzing the search dynamics of evolution strategies proposed in this paper and a framework for genetic algorithms we suggested in (2005). Based on the theoretical analysis, interesting aspects of the search dynamics of GAs and ESs for single objective optimization are revealed. As an extension, preliminary results on the search dynamics of GAs for multi-objective optimization are also presented