  We describe a global optimization technique using `basin-hopping' in which
the potential energy surface is transformed into a collection of
interpenetrating staircases. This method has been designed to exploit the
features which recent work suggests must be present in an energy landscape for
efficient relaxation to the global minimum. The transformation associates any
point in configuration space with the local minimum obtained by a geometry
optimization started from that point, effectively removing transition state
regions from the problem. However, unlike other methods based upon hypersurface
deformation, this transformation does not change the global minimum. The lowest
known structures are located for all Lennard-Jones clusters up to 110 atoms,
including a number that have never been found before in unbiased searches.
