I never saw the terms Exploration
and Exploration
in relation with simulated annealing (SA). This is because there is not really a Tree formed, only a long chain of proposals from current state, and possibly accepting a state. So the structure would be more like a long thing comb, and not a tree, which each teeth would be a proposal state which has a probability to be accepted.
So keep in mind it is uncommon to apply the terms on SA- But I will try anyway with the remark the terms generally apply to algorithms which search with Tree-like structures.
You could- if you really want to- project the terms on Simulated Annealing- Than Exploration/Exploitation is happening at every step, but in the beginning SA is allowed to explore more wildly as the temperature is still high- hence it will accept almost every state. You could call the early phase of SA more Exploration. As the temperature lowers, it will be less likely to accept states with higher energy/objective, but still accept all states resulting in lower energy/objective, which you could call Exploration
phase.