Infinite dimensional optimistic optimisation with applications on   physical systems
  This paper presents a novel numerical optimisation method for infinite dimensional optimisation. The functional optimisation makes minimal assumptions about the functional and without any specific knowledge on the derivative of the functional. The algorithm has been tested on several physical systems (brachistochrone and catenary problems) and it is shown that the solutions obtained are close to the actual solutions in one thousand functional evaluations. It is also shown that for the tested cases, the new algorithm provides better convergence to the optimum value compared to the tested existing algorithms. 
Muhammad F. Kasim, Peter A. Norreys
math.OC physics.comp-ph