The complexity of adaptive annealing

The number of decrements necessary if the changes in the equilibrium density are bounded is derived for a simulated annealing problem. This gives an expression for the CPU-time of the process when all chains have the same length. This expression can also be used for tuning the annealing schedule for a given total CPU-time, while keeping the disturbance of the equilibrium as small as possible. The expression is also valid for generic annealing processes that use a constant factor to obtain the next value of t (the commonly used schedule)