GENETIC ALGORITHMS IN ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS

This paper aims at demonstrating, through examples, the applicability of genetic algorithms to wide classes of problems encountered in astro nomy and astrophysics. Genetic algorithms are heuristic search techniq ues that incorporate, in a computational setting, the biological notio n of evolution by means of natural selection. While increasingly in us e in the fields of computer science, artificial intelligence, and comp uted-aided engineering design, genetic algorithms seem to have attract ed comparatively little attention in the physical sciences thus far. T he following three problems are treated: (1) modeling the rotation cur ve of galaxies, (2) extracting pulsation periods from Doppler velociti es measurements in spectral lines of delta Scuti stars, and (3) constr ucting spherically symmetric wind models for rotating, magnetized sola r-type stars. A listing of the genetic algorithm-based general purpose optimization subroutine PIKAIA, used to solve these problems, is give n in the Appendix.