Annealing

Annealing is the name for a number of processes that change the properties of a piece of work using heat. In general the piece is heated to a certain temperature, and modelled while it cools off. Specifically, annealing can refer to:

• Annealing (metallurgy) when metals are treated
• Annealing (glass) when a piece of glass is heated to remove stress
• Nucleic acid thermodynamics when DNA-like structures are changed
• Simulated annealing is a method of combinatorial optimization to find the optimum of a function
• Quantum annealing is another method of combinatorial optimization