DETERMINATION OF BOUND-STATE WAVE-FUNCTIONS BY A GENETIC ALGORITHM

We present a stochastic method of minimizing the ground state energy i n variational calculations of light nuclei using the refined resonatin g group model. The method utilizes a bit representation of the width p arameters to be varied. To find the best possible set of width paramet ers we use strategies familiar from biological evolution. Very complic ated problems can be solved in this way because the method is intrinsi cally parallel. The algorithm can be used on parallel computers with a ny number of processors without any change. As an example we give the results of a simple model calculation of Li-7.