Lasting Diversity and Superior Runtime Guarantees for the $(μ+1)$ Genetic Algorithm

Most evolutionary algorithms (EAs) used in practice employ crossover. In contrast, only for few and mostly artificial examples a runtime advantage from crossover could be proven with mathematical means. The most convincing such result shows that the $(\mu+1)$ genetic algorithm (GA) with population size $\mu=O(n)$ optimizes jump functions with gap size $k \ge 3$ in time $O(n^k / \mu + n^{k-1}\log n)$, beating the $\Theta(n^k)$ runtime of many mutation-based EAs. This result builds on a proof that the GA occasionally and then for an expected number of $\Omega(\mu^2)$ iterations has a population that is not dominated by a single genotype. In this work, we show that this diversity persist with high probability for a time exponential in $\mu$ (instead of quadratic). From this better understanding of the population diversity, we obtain stronger runtime guarantees, among them the statement that for all $c\ln(n)\le\mu \le n/\log n$, with $c$ a suitable constant, the runtime of the $(\mu+1)$ GA on $\mathrm{Jump}_k$, with $k \ge 3$, is $O(n^{k-1})$. Consequently, already with logarithmic population sizes, the GA gains a speed-up of order $\Omega(n)$ from crossover.