Mathematical exploration and discovery at scale

TL;DR

AlphaEvolve leverages large language models and evolutionary algorithms to autonomously discover, improve, and generalize mathematical solutions across various fields, demonstrating significant potential for advancing mathematical research.

Contribution

The paper introduces AlphaEvolve, a novel AI system that combines LLMs with evolutionary search to autonomously discover and refine mathematical solutions at scale.

Findings

Successfully rediscovered known solutions in most problems

Discovered improved solutions for several problems

Generalized finite solutions into formulas valid for all inputs

Abstract

AlphaEvolve (Novikov et al., 2025) is a generic evolutionary coding agent that combines the generative capabilities of LLMs with automated evaluation in an iterative evolutionary framework that proposes, tests, and refines algorithmic solutions to challenging scientific and practical problems. In this paper we showcase AlphaEvolve as a tool for autonomously discovering novel mathematical constructions and advancing our understanding of long-standing open problems. To demonstrate its breadth, we considered a list of 67 problems spanning mathematical analysis, combinatorics, geometry, and number theory. The system rediscovered the best known solutions in most of the cases and discovered improved solutions in several. In some instances, AlphaEvolve is also able to generalize results for a finite number of input values into a formula valid for all input values. Furthermore, we are able to combine this methodology with Deep Think and AlphaProof in a broader framework where the additional proof-assistants and reasoning systems provide automated proof generation and further mathematical insights. These results demonstrate that large language model-guided evolutionary search can autonomously discover mathematical constructions that complement human intuition, at times matching or even improving the best known results, highlighting the potential for significant new ways of interaction between mathematicians and AI systems. We present AlphaEvolve as a powerful new tool for mathematical discovery, capable of exploring vast search spaces to solve complex optimization problems at scale, often with significantly reduced requirements on preparation and computation time.