DEoptim: An R Package for Global Optimization by Differential Evolution

This article describes the R package DEoptim which implements the differential evolution algorithm for the global optimization of a real-valued function of a real-valued parameter vector. The implementation of differential evolution in DEoptim interfaces with C code for efficiency. The utility of the package is illustrated via case studies in fitting a Parratt model for X-ray reflectometry data and a Markov-Switching Generalized AutoRegressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (MSGARCH) model for the returns of the Swiss Market Index.