A Model with Darwinian Dynamics on a Rugged Landscape

We discuss the population dynamics with selection and random diffusion, keeping the total population constant, in a fitness landscape associated with Constraint Satisfaction, a paradigm for difficult optimization problems. We obtain a phase diagram in terms of the size of the population and the diffusion rate, with a glass phase inside which the dynamics keeps searching for better configurations, and outside which deleterious ‘mutations’ spoil the performance. The phase diagram is analogous to that of dense active matter in terms of temperature and drive.