The time-dependent traveling salesman problem

A problem often considered in Operations Research and Computational Physics is the traveling salesman problem, in which a traveling salesperson has to find the shortest closed tour between a given set of cities touching each city exactly once. The distances between the single nodes are known to the traveling salesperson. An extension of this problem is the time-dependent traveling salesman problem, in which these distances vary in time. I will show how this more complex problem is treated with physical optimization algorithms like simulated annealing. I will present results for the problem of the 127 beergardens in the area of Augsburg, in which I define a traffic zone in which traffic jams occur in the afternoon